FACING    REALITY 


ESME  WINGFIELD-STRATFORD 


"I  will  not  cease  from  mental  fight, 
Nor  shall  my  sword  sleep  in  my  hand. 
Till  we  have  built  Jerusalem 
In  England's  green  and  pleasant  land." 


FACING     REALITY 


BY 


ESME  WINGFIELD-STRATFORD 

D.Sc,   EX-FELLOW  KING'S,  CAMBRIDGE 

Author  of  "The  History  of  English  Patriotism," 
"The  Reconstruction  of  Mind,"  etc. 


NEW  XaJr  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,    1922, 
BY  GEORGE   H.   DORAN   COMPANY 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


INTRODUCTION 

In  the  following  pages  I  have  tried  to  show  the 
danger  in  which  our  civilisation  stands  owing  to  its 
neglect  of  reality.  Our  advance  in  mechanical  power 
during  the  last  century  and  a  half  has  transformed 
the  conditions  of  human  life.  Its  ever  increasing  pace 
and  complexity  call  for  a  corresponding  advance  in 
mental  and  social  organisation. 

No  such  advance  has  been  made  or  even  seriously 
attempted.     We  have  gone  on  feverishly  improving 
the  machines  and  leaving  the  rest  to  chance ;  in  conse- 
quence, our  increased  powers  have  been  turned  to 
wasteful  and  mutually  destructive  purposes.     We 
have  the  power  to  smash  civilisation  to  pieces  and 
both  in  the  international  and  domestic  spheres  are 
preparing  to  use  it,  for  want  of  a  sane  attempt  to 
order  our  affairs  to  the  best  advantage. 
•J       I  have  first  tried  to  show  the  nature  and  unique 
w  urgency  of  the  crisis  through  which  civiUsation  is 
'^  passing.    I  have  next  traced  its  development  out  of 
H  the  failure  of  mankind  to  adapt  itself  mentally  to  its 
^^  advance  in  physical  power.     In  default  of  any  ra- 
tional effort  to  control  the  situation,  free  play  was 
given  to  an  anarchy  of  egotisms,  private  and  national, 
which  not  only  dissipated  the  hard-won   spoils  of 
nature  but  actually  turned  them  to  a  fearful  menace. 


,'5'7(>84.5 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

The  further  we  plunged  into  anarchy,  the  more 
difficult  did  it  become  to  recover  control,  owing  to  the 
fact  that  when  it  is  in  everybody's  interest  to  distort 
the  truth,  lying  becomes  a  universal  art.  The  not 
unnatural  result  was  a  tendency  to  burke  serious 
issues  and  an  unwillingness  to  face  the  inconvenient 
facts  of  life,  whence  we  were  only  partially  awakened 
by  the  criminal  lunacy  of  the  Great  War,  which 
brought  civilisation  to  the  verge  of  collapse,  and 
warned  mankind  in  unmistakable  terms  that  it  must 
either  mend  its  ways  promptly  or  perish  miserably. 

An  attempt  is  next  made  to  examine  in  more  detail 
the  mental  habits  bequeathed  from  a  state  of  civilisa- 
tion which  our  own  efforts  have  outdated.  The  hope 
of  appreciating  or  facing  reality  is  frustrated  by  rea- 
son being  made  a  slave  to  will.  Our  judgment,  our 
vision,  are  distorted  by  passion;  positively  by  our 
desire  to  see  things  as  we  would  have  them,  nega- 
tively by  our  distaste  for  taking  more  mental  trouble 
than  we  can  help.  The  results  of  this  turning  away 
from  the  truth  are  traced  in  creative  art,  in  politics, 
in  the  social  system  and  finally  in  religion. 

There  is  no  need  that  civilisation  should  perish.  If 
only  our  wisdom  were  to  increase  with  our  resources, 
we  might,  within  the  lifetime  of  most  of  us,  realise  a 
state  of  things  of  which  the  most  robust  optimist  has 
hardly  dared  to  dream.  Our  destiny  is  in  our  power, 
we  have  only  to  command  it.  It  is  by  our  neglect  that 
it  becomes  our  mistress  and  our  destroyer.  The 
cause  lies  in  our  haphazard  and  slovenly  methods  of 
thought,  and,  most  of  all,  in  our  failure  either  to  seek 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

or  see  the  facts  of  life.  We.  who  were  born  for  the 
truth,  live  in  a  world  of  delusions.  We  have  lost  our 
innocence  of  vision,  and  see  only  the  conventions, 
symbols  and  formulas  that  we  have  created  in  the 
image  of  our  desires  and  fears. 

The  disease  and  the  remedy  are  within  ourselves. 
To  propound  schemes  and  systems  of  social  reform  is 
worse  than  futile.  To  a  man  whose  way  of  life  is 
bringing  him  to  the  brink  of  the  grave,  we  do  not 
present  a  bottle  of  patent  medicine.  Either  the  whole 
man  must  be  changed  or  nothing  is  done.  It  would 
be  hard  to  better  the  old  precept  that  men  should  see 
with  their  eyes  and  hear  with  their  ears  and  under- 
stand with  their  hearts  and  be  converted. 

The  problem  is,  in  its  essence,  one  of  religion.  But 
religion  itself  is,  more  than  any  other  human  activity, 
infected  by  our  haphazard  and  slovenly  methods  of 
thought,  so  that  the  very  name  has  come  to  be  asso- 
ciated with  myth  and  make-believe.  But  if  we  are  to 
get  right  with  reality  or,  in  the  time-honoured  evan- 
gelical phrase,  with  God,  it  must  be  by  a  ruthless 
determination  to  get  the  truth  in  religion,  even  if  we 
have  to  break  down  Church  walls  to  attain  it.  For 
religion  is  man's  attitude  in  face  of  the  ultimate 
reality. 

It  only  remains  to  add  that  I  have  tried  to  see  and 
discuss  this  matter  from  the  standpoint  of  no  sect  or 
party,  but  as  one  humbly  seeking  for  the  truth  in  a 
matter  of  vital  importance.  It  is  easy  to  paint  a  situa- 
tion in  hectic  colours,  and  to  clamour  for  revolutionary 
nostrums.    But  it  is  better  and  wiser  to  understate  a 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

good  case  than  to  caU  fools  into  a  circle  by  assaulting 
a  jaded  appetite  for  sensation.  The  danger  to  all 
of  us  is  sufficientlj^  imminent,  sufficiently  alarming, 
without  any  attempt  to  exaggerate  it. 

If  half  of  what  I  have  tried  to  establish  be  very 
truth,  the  catastrophe  towards  which  we  and  ours  are 
rapidly  though  not  inevitably  drifting  is  something 
to  appal  the  most  lurid  imagination.  I  beg,  therefore, 
for  no  more  than  a  patient  and  critical  hearing,  that  I 
may  be  judged  not  by  passion  nor  prejudice,  but  by 
the  reality  to  which  I  have  appealed.  And  if,  in  the 
course  of  argument,  I  have  been  betrayed  into  bias  or 
injustice,  I  trust  that  the  blame  will  be  allowed  to  rest 
upon  my  o\\ii  shoulders,  and  that  the  fault  of  the 
pleader  will  not  prevent  a  fair  judgment  of  the  case. 
What  any  one  of  us  is  or  thinks  is  of  infinitely  little 
importance.  The  truth  is  all  that  matters.  May  it, 
even  at  this  latest  hour,  prevail ! 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Introduction v 

I     Life  AND  Reality 11 

II     The  Crisis  of  Civilisation         28 

III  Poisoning  the  Wells 44 

IV  The  Reign  of  Triviality 63 

V     Grounds  of  Hope 84 

VI     War  and  Reality 102 

VII     Thinking  in  a  Passion 120 

VIII     Mental  Inertia 139 

IX     Creative  Art  and  Reality 156 

X     Politics  and  Reality 174 

XI     Reality  and  the  Social  System 199 

XII     The  Gospel  of  Reality 218 

Epilogue 236 


FACING    REALITY 


CHAPTER  I 

LIFE  AND  REALITY 

WHICHEVER  of  the  versions  of  its  history  we 
choose  to  accept,  we  are  at  least  safe  in  af- 
firming that  hfe,  from  its  beginning  in  jelly  to  its  cul- 
mination in  man  or  beyond-man,  is  one  continuous 
adaptation  of  the  creature  to  a  reality  of  which  that 
creatui'e  is  part.  The  meanest  animalcule,  which 
folds  itself  round  some  speck  of  food  and  then  leaves 
it  after  absorbing  its  nourishment,  is  facing  the  facts 
as  it  understands  them  and  making  such  arrange- 
ments as  it  can  to  deal  with  them. 

It  is  more  akin  to  the  sage  and  hero  than  to  the 
* 'active"  volcano  or  the  clouds  which  Coleridge  took 
as  the  types  of  freedom,  but  which  are  merely  casual 
collections  of  matter  blindly  driven  along  by  forces  as 
bhnd  as  they,  and  whose  very  names  are  only  for  the 
arbitrary  convenience  of  conscious  life  in  compre- 
hending its  opposite. 

Outside  hfe  there  is  no  unity  that  endures,  there 

is  neither  progress  nor  memory ;  crystal  and  stone  and 

planet  have  no  being  except  in  our  minds,  and  the 

particles  of  matter  cling  together  or  fly  apart  in  one 

perpetual,  purposeless  dance  of  death. 

11 


12  FACING  REALITY 

What,  then,  is  the  object  of  hfe?  What  makes  it 
worth  while  for  the  animalcule  to  gi'ope  for  food  and 
the  dying  Goethe  to  call  for  light?  Surely  the  impulse 
that  urges  forward  all  creatures,  at  first  blindly  but  at 
last  with  increasing  consciousness  of  its  purpose,  was 
never  better  expressed  than  in  the  words:  "that  they 
should  have  life,  and  have  it  more  abundantly." 

Life,  in  fact,  is  its  own  object.  As  it  grows  aware 
of  a  wider  and  wider  reality,  so  does  its  reply  become 
more  varied,  more  delicate  and  more  imperative. 
Ever  more  and  more  does  it  rejoice  in  its  strength  and 
beauty,  ever  further  and  further  is  it  removed  from 
the  blind  obedience  of  matter,  as  it  comes  to  under* 
stand  itself  and  to  take  coromand  over  its  destinies. 

Now  that  our  eyes  have  been  opened,  however 
dimly,  to  its  upward  progress  through  so  many 
millions  of  years,  who  shall  dare  to  limit  its  growth 
by  human  imagination?  It  may  be  that  we  are  on 
the  way  to  a  race  of  beings  to  whom  we  shall  be  as 
mud.  It  may  be  that  our  own  human  experiment  will 
be  sidetracked  like  that  of  the  gigantic  lizards,  that  not 
to  our  children  or  even  to  our  planet  will  be  granted 
the  realisation  of  life's  possibilities. 

That,  if  it  be  so,  is  no  reason  why  we,  about  to 
die,  should  not  have  life  and  have  it  as  abundantly  as 
possible  according  to  our  means.  It  is  well  to  act  on 
the  assumption,  which  may  be  true,  that  the  destiny 
of  life  is  in  our  hands. 

If  every  creature  were  accurately  apprised  of  such 
facts  as  concern  it  and  able  to  make  the  appropriate 
reply  with  automatic  exactitude,  the  world  would  be 


LIFE  AND  REALITY  13 

a  more  orderly  and  happy  place  than  it  is,  but  life 
would  also  halt  in  its  tracks  and  maintain  a  comfort- 
able stagnation  until  the  diminishing  heat  of  the  sun 
chilled  it  out  of  existence. 

It  is  fortunate  that  life  has,  from  the  vei*y  begin- 
ning, been  wasteful  and  haphazard  to  an  almost  in- 
credible extent.  Its  adjustment  to  realitj^  has  been, 
at  best,  but  blind  and  blundering  guesswork.  Not  that 
any  living  thing  is  ever  entirely  without  a  reason  for 
what  it  does,  but  that  the  facts  of  life  are  constantly 
changing,  and  life  fails  to  change  with  them.  The 
batsman  makes  a  correct  stroke  at  one  ball,  and  tries 
to  repeat  it  on  the  next,  which  is  different,  to  the  loss 
of  his  wicket. 

One  of  the  most  curious  instances  of  this  failure  of 
life  to  adjust  itself  to  changing  reality  is  that  of  the 
lemming  rats  in  Norway,  who  every  ten  years  or  so 
gather  in  immense  hordes  and  migrate,  eating  up 
everything  on  their  way,  into  the  sea.  It  is  conjec- 
tured that  long  ago  there  were  feeding  grounds  which 
the  waves  have  covered,  and  that  these  rats  have  not 
even  now  discovered  that  times  have  changed  and  a 
wise  rat  will  change  with  them. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  think  of  men  and  peoples  who 
order  their  hves  in  much  the  same  fashion  as  lem- 
mings. There  are  men  who,  observing  a  rise  in  some 
particular  class  of  securities,  assume  that  it  is  in  their 
very  nature  to  go  on  rising,  and  buy  in  at  an  extrava- 
gant price  on  the  verge  of  a  slump.  There  are  nations 
who  because  some  particular  policy — say  a  high  tariff 
or  free  trade — has  succeeded  for  a  time,  imagine  that 


14  FACING  REALITY 

they  have  discovered  the  simple  formula  for  pros- 
perity. 

Like  the  lemmings,  they  continue  to  follow  the  old, 
tried  path  when  the  happy  feeding  grounds  are  under 
the  sea.  Life  for  them  is  an  adjustment  to  circum- 
stances that  have  ceased  to  be.  They  have  lost  touch 
-with  reality. 

We  shall  not  concern  ourselves  with  the  question  as 
to  whether  animal  life  has  developed  by  the  different 
species  adapting  themselves  to  reality  by  a  cunning 
passed  on  from  generation  to  generation,  or  whether 
reahty  has  forced  itself  on  life  by  killing  off  all  but 
those  members  who  have  chanced  to  be  adapted  to  it. 
That  is  a  biological  problem  with  which  we  are  here 
in  no  way  concerned,  since  there  is  no  reason  for  as- 
suming that  what  may  have  held  good  for  brutes  also 
holds  good  for  men.  It  may  be,  as  Huxley  thought, 
that  it  is  the  task  of  humanity  to  reverse  the  process 
of  natural  selection,  and  follow  a  rule  more  akin  to 
that  of  Christ  than  that  of  primeval  dragons  tearing 
each  other  in  their  slime. 

We  have  acquired  discourse  of  reason  to  no  pur- 
pose if  not  to  the  comprehension  and  shaping  of  our 
destiny  as  a  species.  What  was  a  blind  adjustment  to 
reality  in  the  past  has  now  to  become  an  ordered  and 
deliberate  progress,  as  the  only  alternative  to  a  catas- 
trophe that  may  be  final  as  far  as  mankind  is  con- 
cerned. 

For  neither  blind  selection  nor  a  more  or  less  in- 
stinctive adaptation  will  any  longer  serve  the  purposes 
of  mankind.     Reason,  with  its  result  of  a  partial 


LIFE  AND  REALITY  15 

command  over  nature,  will,  if  it  fails  to  be  our  saviour, 
prove  our  destroyer. 

The  brontosaurus,  who  had  indulged  in  a  tearing 
match  with  a  neighbouring  tyrannosaurus,  could  prob- 
ably, if  he  happened  to  be  the  survivor,  shamble  off 
and  refresh  himself  comfortably  from  the  top  of  the 
nearest  tree,  not  permanently  the  worse  for  the  ad- 
venture. It  would  have  been  different  for  him  if,  in 
the  course  of  the  fight,  the  combatants  had  succeeded 
in  destroying  the  whole  forest,  with  most  of  its  inhabi- 
tants, which  is  very  much  what  happens  in  the  organ- 
ised combats  of  mankind,  and  will  happen  to  an 
increasing  extent  in  the  future. 

To  trust  to  luck  and  let  shp  the  dogs  of  natural  se- 
lection upon  human  communities  is,  quite  irrespective 
of  what  may  or  may  not  have  served  in  past  ages,  to 
sign  the  death  warrant  of  humanity.  Life  has  come 
out  of  the  nursery  and  has  to  make  its  own  way  in  the 
world  or  perish. 

Whether,  in  regard  to  the  past,  we  are  Lamarck- 
ians,  and  believe  in  instinctive  adaptation,  or  Dar- 
winians, and  believe  in  a  blind  struggle  to  survive, 
may  be  a  question  for  experts,  but  about  the  future 
no  reasonable  man  can  fail  to  be  a  Lamarckian,  with 
the  difference  that  adaptation  must  be  no  longer  in- 
stinctive but  of  deliberate  purpose  on  the  part  of  each 
individual  and  of  mankind  as  a  whole. 

Whatever  the  means  of  performing  it,  the  task  of 
life  is  always  the  same  adaptation  of  the  creature  to 
reality,  and  to  a  reality  that  grows  wider  and  more 
opulent  with  each  new  advance  of  life  to  meet  it.    A 


16  FACING  REALITY 

man  does  not  live  in  the  same  world  as  a  beast,  nor  a 
fool  in  the  same  world  as  a  sage. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  sink  the  mind  so  low  as 
to  form  the  faintest  conception  of  the  dark  and  scanty- 
world  that  exists  for  the  animalcules — an  infinitely 
vague  sense  of  something  good  to  absorb,  an  infinitely 
bhnd  groping  and  perhaps  a  faint  and  vague  sense 
of  alternate  want  and  satisfaction. 

Still  more  incomprehensible  to  our  imagination  is 
the  world  as  it  exists  for  a  plant,  which  solves  its 
own  problems,  sometimes  with  elaborate  ingenuity, 
but  without  the  apparent  possession  of  any  sort  of 
consciousness  except,  perhaps,  something  diffused 
through  the  whole  organism  in  a  way  of  which  we  may 
write,  but  can  by  no  means  comprehend. 

And  yet  the  plant  and  the  animal  deal  with  their 
own  reahty  according  to  their  own  needs  in  a  way  that 
has  sometimes  moved  the  envy  of  the  most  imagina- 
tive among  mankind. 

"Thou,"  cries  Keats,  listening  to  the  nightingale, 

"Hast  never  known 

The  weariness,  the  fever  and  the  fret 

Here,  where  men  sit  and  hear  each  other  groan," 

In  the  same  way  did  Rousseau,  sick  of  the  shams  of 
a  frilled  and  bewigged  civilisation,  sigh  for  the  noble 
simplicity  of  the  savage. 

What  is  a  mood,  and  no  more  than  a  mood,  among 
Western  peoples,  is  a  fixed  habit  of  mind  among  many 
of  their  less  progressive  brethren.  Such  a  people  as 
the  Chinese  desire  nothing  better  than  to  come  to  a 
permanent  and  comfortable  arrangement  between  life 


LIFE  AND  REALITY  17 

and  reality,  never  to  change  the  world  they  live  in 
nor  their  own  reply  to  the  demands  that  this  world 
makes  upon  them. 

So  long  as  all  goes  well,  the  Sphinx  Reality  will, 
century  in  and  century  out,  go  on  putting  the  same 
riddles,  and  the  Chinaman  will  make  the  same  poHte 
and  dignified  replies  as  Confucius  made  before  him, 
and  the  great,  good  Emperors  before  Confucius.  In 
recent  years  the  Chinaman's  world  has  been  changed, 
much  in  his  own  despite,  and  what  answer  he  will 
ultimately  make  to  a  new  set  of  riddles  is  a  matter  of 
no  light  moment  to  mankind. 

In  truth,  this  attitude  of  stopping  the  clock  and 
keeping  reality  and  life  in  fixed  relations  to  each  other 
has  been  that  of  an  overwhelming  majority  of  crea- 
tures from  the  beginning.  There  may  even  now  be 
animals  whose  life  and  world  are  not  essentially  differ- 
ent from  those  of  the  first  lumps  of  protoplasm  that 
detached  themselves  from  the  warm  Archaean  mud. 
It  is  even  possible  that  if  a  momentary  intelligence 
could  be  granted  to  one  of  them  for  the  purpose  of 
defending  this  unambitious  way  of  life,  he  could  do 
so  with  the  most  irrefutable  plausibility. 

"Better,"  the  minute  philosopher  might  say,  "our 
peaceful  groping  in  the  dark  after  specks,  than  the 
whole  edifice  of  twentieth  century  civilisation  and 
contention  therewith."  To  which  ®ur  only  just  reply 
would  be,  "you  may  be  a  sensible  but  you  are  neverthe- 
less a  wofully  ignoble  lump  of  jelly." 

For  all  through  the  millions  of  years  during  which 
life  has  been  replying  to  reality,  it  is  only  a  scanty 


18  FACING  REALITY 

minority  that  have  cared  to  embark  upon  the  adven- 
ture of  enlarging  their  world,  and  their  own  selves  or 
souls  along  with  it.  These  have  probably  been  driven 
to  find  a  fresh  solution,  because  the  Sphinx  has  pre- 
sented to  them  the  alternative  of  answering  a  new 
riddle  or  dying.    Most  of  them  probably  died. 

A  slight  change  of  temperature  or  perhaps  some 
mesozoic  disease  at  which  we  can  only  guess  was 
enough  to  wipe  out  the  whole  monstrous  race  of  sau- 
rians,  and  leave  the  mastership  of  the  world  to  insig- 
nificant but  hardy  little  creatures  who  had  hopped 
and  scuttled  about  only  too  glad  to  keep  clear  of  the 
claws  and  teeth  of  their  gigantic  neighbours.  A 
slight  change  of  reality  had  proved  too  much  for  the 
lizard  powers  of  adaptation,  the  Sphinx  had  changed 
the  riddle  and  they  could  only  go  on  giving  the  old, 
superseded  answer. 

To-day  a  similar  crisis  is  taking  place  with  mankind. 
Fresh  riddles  are  being  propounded  with  unprece- 
dented rapidity  and  men  go  on  obstinately  mouthing 
the  old  answers:  "War  is  a  necessity  of  life,"  "God 
is  the  author  of  one  book  and  the  property  of  one 
religion,"  "Empire  is  my  people  imposing  its  will 
upon  lesser  breeds,"  "The  capitalist  or  the  Bolshevik 
or  the  Bosche  is  the  one  enemy  worth  fighting 
against."  But  to  give  the  old  answer  to  the  new  ques- 
tion is  as  certain  death  to  the  man  as  it  was  to  the 
lizard. 

So  that  we  are  committed,  at  the  peril  of  our  lives, 
to  putting  ourselves  right  with  reality  or,  as  a  Salva- 
tionist might  express  it  according  to  his  own  pictur- 


LIFE  AND  REALITY  19 

esque  symbolism,  with  God.  And  it  is  a  reality  that 
changes  with  bewildering  rapidity,  a  Sphinx  that 
bombards  us  with  riddles.  For  it  is  now  but  an  aca- 
demic question  whether  it  is  better  to  take  the  safe 
and  unambitious  way  of  Cliinaman  and  animalcule. 

There  can  be  no  question  of  stopping  the  clock.  It 
is  we  and  our  Western  forefathers  who  have  set  the 
pace  in  the  game  of  life,  and  it  is  beyond  our  power 
to  check  it.  We  have  chosen  the  heroic  path,  have 
volunteered  for  the  forlorn  hope  of  life — hfe  that  has 
only  progressed  by  a  series  of  forlorn  hopes — and  it  is 
too  late  to  retreat.  Linked  as  we  are  with  reality,  we 
have  got  to  keep  pace  with  her  changes  or  perish  mis- 
erably in  her  wake. 

In  our  childhood  we  used  to  be  told  of  a  day  of 
judgment,  at  some  comfortably  distant  date,  in  which 
all  hearts  and  lives  should  be  tried,  and  the  false  sepa- 
rated from  the  true  as  gold  from  dross  in  the  furnace. 
Little  did  we  dream  that  that  day  was  upon  us  here 
and  now,  that  even  in  all  the  pride  and  safety  of  life  a 
voice,  not  to  be  denied,  might  sound  from  without  to 
man:  "Fool,  this  night  thj^  soul  shall  be  required  of 
thee — to  look  naked  reality  in  the  face,  and  hve  or  die 
as  thy  worth  may  be." 

Such  a  voice  sounded  when  the  harvest  was  stand- 
ing ripe  and  the  roads  were  alive  with  singing  holiday- 
makers  at  the  breaking  of  the  peace  in  1914.  Answer 
we  did,  and  though  millions  perished,  civilisation,  by 
the  skin  of  its  teeth,  survived.  But  whether  to  at- 
tain fresh  conquests,  or  whether  hke  a  desperately 
wounded  animal  it  crawls  along  in  weakness  and  un- 


20  FACING  REALITY 

certainty  until  it  receives  its  coup  de  grace^  is  a  ques- 
tion that  time  will  answer. 

If  the  problem  that  we  have  to  solve  is  more  insis- 
tent than  ever  before,  it  is  none  the  less  one,  we  might 
say  the  one,  of  all  time.  The  greatness  of  men  and 
nations  has  consisted  in  this,  that  they  faced  reality 
with  more  success  and  sincerity  than  others,  that  they 
have  seen  her,  as  it  were,  naked.  This  will  be  appar- 
ent if  we  consider  any  one  of  those  men  of  thought  or 
action  whom  mankind  has  united  to  honour,  and  ask- 
ing in  what  their  greatness  consisted. 

Take  Napoleon,  who  has  the  advantage  for  our 
purpose  of  presenting  a  sharp  and  obvious  contrast 
of  greatness  and  pettiness.  His  success  as  a  soldier 
was  due  to  nothing  but  the  single  eye  for  reality  that 
he  kept  amid  circumstances  unprecedentedly  favour- 
able. He  made  himself  master,  by  sedulous  reading, 
of  all  that  could  be  learnt  from  history  about  the  mili- 
tary art,  but  this  had  the  effect  not  of  binding  him  to 
rules  and  precedents,  but  of  giving  his  mind  the  widest 
scope  for  freedom. 

He  astounded  his  opponents  by  his  contempt  for 
rules,  he  turned  up  on  the  Danube  when  by  all 
accepted  principles  he  ought  to  have  been  in  France, 
and  the  Austrian  officers,  when  they  laid  down  their 
arms,  were  less  mortified  by  their  defeat  than  scan- 
dalised at  the  conduct  of  this  ignorant  and  presump- 
tuous young  man  who  dared  to  set  up  his  notions 
of  strategy  against  the  rules  of  good  old  Marshal 
Daun. 

It  was  only  as  he  grew  middle-aged  and  lost  his 


LIFE  AND  REALITY  21 

vigour  and  suppleness,  both  of  body  and  mind,  that 
Napoleon  began  to  see  the  thing  that  was  not,  that  he 
tried  to  march  to  Moscow  as  if  it  were  Vienna  and  to 
ally  himself  with  a  blousy  Hapsburg,  as  if  that  would 
make  the  Kings  of  Europe  forget  that  he  was  a  child 
of  the  revolution  and  take  him  to  their  arms  as  a 
brother. 

Reality  ceased  to  exist  for  him,  he  substituted  for  it 
an  abstraction  which  he  called  his  star,  and  which 
would  bring  him  victories  in  spite  of  himself.  To  the 
problem  of  Spain  he  gave  the  answer  of  Austerlitz,  he 
strove  to  establish  his  new  Empire  on  the  principles  of 
the  old  regime.  And  he  perished  as  every  creature 
must  who  sins  against  reality  and  follows  his  own  vain 
imaginations. 

Why  is  it  that  we  agree — even  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 
would,  we  imagine,  accompany  us  thus  far — in  hon- 
ouring Shakespeare  as  among  the  greatest  of  Eng- 
lishmen? His  own  friend,  Ben  Jonson,  remarked 
the  deficiencies  of  his  scholarship,  there  was  never  a 
man  less  tied  to  any  formal  rules  and  precedents  of 
dramatic  art.  What  has  raised  him  for  all  time  above 
his  contemporaries  is  the  man's  simple  and  transcen- 
dent sense  of  reality. 

Ingenious  critics  may  try  to  make  his  characters  the 
types  of  this  or  that,  but  what  endears  them  to  suc- 
cessive generations  of  audiences  is  the  fact  that  they 
are  not  types  at  all,  but  men,  Macbeth  and  Hamlet 
and  Lear,  of  a  reality  so  poignant  that  it  seems  to  burn 
itself  into  the  brain. 

When  Macduff  pulls  his  cap  about  his  eyes  and 


22  FACING  REALITY 

replies  to  Malcolm's  consolations  with,  *'He  has  no 
children!"  we  feel  the  reality  of  his  loss  as  if  we  our- 
selves had  been  bereaved.  Shakespeare  looks  out 
upon  life  with  the  open  eyes  of  a  little  child,  that  sees 
it  just  as  it  is,  and  through  it  to  what  lies  beyond. 

But  we  need  not  go  to  our  greatest  for  confirmation 
of  the  universal  truth  that  a  man's  worth  is  his  sense 
of  reality.  It  is  a  fact  of  everyday  experience.  It 
is  what  we  mean  when  we  say  that  a  man  has  character, 
or  when  we  feel  that  his  personality  carries  weight.  It 
is  not  mere  cleverness  or  even  success  that  men  admire 
in  those  with  whom  they  are  in  daily  contact,  it  is  an 
innate  sense  of  fact,  a  touch  with  reality. 

The  rough  selection  of  school  and  mess-room  is 
directed  to  the  elimination  of  shams.  Any  tendency 
of  a  man  to  get  "above  himself,"  any  little  piece  of 
"side"  or  self-advertisement  designed  to  cry  up  his 
own  worth  as  other  than  what  it  is,  gets  mercilessly 
pounced  upon. 

The  pretentious  man,  he  who  cannot  honour  his 
cheques  upon  the  bank  of  reality,  is  the  butt  of  all 
time.  He  is  Braggadocio,  he  is  Ancient  Pistol,  he 
is  the  profiteer  squire  and  the  "temporary  gentleman" 
who  sports  an  eyeglass  and  painfully  acquires  a  stock 
of  rasping  oaths  in  order  to  look  like  a  regular. 

Wherever  men  meet  together  there  is  a  tacit  under- 
standing on  this  subject,  that  overlaps  the  bounds  of 
discipline  and  convention. 

"Was  Major  So-and-so  with  you  in  the  great  ad- 
vance?" asked  an  officer  of  a  couple  of  privates  who 
were  back  at  the  depot  for  a  few  days. 


LIFE  AND  REALITY  23 

"He,  sir!"  came  the  reply,  with  the  faintest  sus- 
picion of  a  grin,  ''not  he!  Why,  they  put  him  to  look 
after  a  rest  camp." 

Even  to  the  most  loyal  martinet,  who  had  been  in 
daily  contact  with  the  Major,  it  was  impossible  to  miss 
or  resent  the  meaning  of  this  remark.  And  where  the 
lips  are  silent,  the  eye  twinkles  assent. 

So  that  alike  in  its  most  important  and  trivial  mani- 
festations, the  secret  of  life  is  nothing  but  the  just 
apprehension  of  reality.  "From  the  unreal  lead  me 
to  the  real"  is  a  cry  that  has  gone  up  from  the  heart 
of  every  nation  and  every  order  of  life,  and  the  desire 
to  escape  from  Maya,  illusion,  is  not  confined  to  the 
adherents  of  one  philosophy  alone.  But  it  must  not 
be  imagined  that  reahty  is  so  simple  and  obvious  a 
thing  that  it  can  be  compassed  by  a  formula  or  at- 
tained by  a  short-cut. 

Movements  towards  the  simple  life  or  a  return  to 
nature  not  infrequently  end  by  plunging  compara- 
tively simple  and  sincere  people  into  elaborate  artifi- 
ciality. The  fine  gentlemen  and  ladies  who  sought 
relief  from  the  insincerity  of  courts  by  going  about 
with  crooks  and  calling  each  other  Coridon  and 
Amaryllis  were  merely  imposing  one  insincerity  upon 
another. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  man  so  consciously  artificial  as 
Oscar  Wilde  could  plead,  not  without  some  plausi- 
bility, that  in  choosing  exquisite  and  recondite  means 
of  self-expression,  he  was  clothing  with  the  only  ap- 
propriate form  emotions  which,  as  an  artist,  he  really 
felt,  and  that  to  use  the  ordinary  language  of  life  for 


24  FACING  REALITY 

feelings  that  were  not  ordinary  was  the  grossest  insin- 
cerity. 

To  be  rough  and  uncouth  is  not  necessarily  to  be 
sincere,  any  more  than  it  is  natural  for  a  modern 
young  man  to  stroll  down  Piccadilly  naked.  As  life 
attains  mastery  over  matter,  so  does  it  make  its  sur- 
rounding reality  more  complex,  and  needs  more  com- 
plex adaptations  to  it. 

Rousseau's  noble  savage  has  no  existence  except 
as  a  noble  aspiration,  and  even  Carlyle's  splendid  cult 
of  heroism  was  marred  by  a  shght  tendency  to  asso- 
ciate it  with  rudeness  and  violence  that  grew  upon 
him  in  his  later  years  and  in  his  early  maturity  hard- 
ened his  heart  to  drag  the  refined  and  delicate  Jane 
Welsh  to  eat  out  her  heart  as  the  drudge  of  Craigen- 
puttock. 

It  is  especially  necessary  to  sound  this  note  of 
warning  in  view  of  the  fact  that  a  modern  school  of 
thinkers  and  artists  imagines  that  it  has  discovered 
the  whole  secret  of  sincerity  to  lie  in  being  as  dis- 
agreeable as  possible,  and  sedulously  filing  off  the 
refinements  of  life.  Necessary  but  unsavoury  accom- 
paniments of  eveiyday  existence,  formerly  supposed 
to  be  in  the  province  of  the  doctor  and  sanitarj^  inspec- 
tor, are  forced  with  disgusting  irrelevance  upon  the 
attention  of  the  reader  by  an  otherwise  subtle  and 
charming  novelist. 

Another  novelist  animadverts  with  a  scorn  that 
every  really  cultured  reader  is  expected  to  share  upon 
a  woman  who  says  "perspiration"  where  he  would 
say  "sweat,"  oblivious  of  the  fact  that  it  is  no  more 


LIFE  AND  REALITY  25 

natural  to  wish  one's  imagination  to  be  assaulted  by  a 
word  vividly  creative  of  an  offensive  sensation  than 
it  is  to  sniff  at  every  dirty  person  one  meets  in  the 
street.  The  Victorian  affectation  of  prettiness  has, 
in  fact,  been  succeeded  by  an  affectation  of  ugliness 
that  is  equally  insincere,  and  much  less  pleasing. 

Poets  vie  with  each  other  in  discordant  cacophony, 
artists  in  disfiguring  and  caricaturing  their  sitters, 
amid  a  chorus  of  praise  from  everybody  who  wants  to 
be  up-to-date,  including  the  victims  themselves. 

There  is  another  short-cut  to  reality  whose  advo- 
cacy is  but  the  incomplete  application  of  a  fruitful  and 
stimulating  idea.  This  is  the  concentration  upon  the 
bare  facts  of  life  as  they  can  be  recorded  exactly  and 
quantitatively  in  books  of  statistics. 

Such  is  the  standpoint  of  one  of  our  most  thought- 
ful modern  novelists.  Miss  Rose  Macaulay,  in  the 
most  brilliant  and  challenging  of  her  books,  as  a  title 
for  which  she  has  coined  the  catchword  Potterism. 
In  so  far  as  this  Potterism  denotes  the  sloppy  and 
sentimental  thinking  that  passes  everywhere  current 
nowadays,  sympathy  from  all  men  of  goodwill  must 
go  out  to  Miss  Macaulay  in  her  crusade  against  it. 
It  is  only  when  she  comes  to  the  remedy  that  she 
allows  herself  to  overshoot  the  mark. 

To  eliminate  all  the  tenderness  and  colour  from  life, 
to  act  as  if  all  mysteries  were  conquerable  by  rule  and 
line  and  as  if  there  were  no  truth  that  could  not  be 
comprised  between  the  paper  covers  of  a  blue-book  is 
to  simplify  the  quest  for  facts  by  ignoring  all  but  the 
most  unessential  and  trivial.     It  is  the  conduct  of 


26  FACING  REALITY 

Bunjan's  man  with  a  muck  rake,  who  could  look  no 
way  but  downwards,  and  went  on  patiently  raking 
together  straws  when  One  was  standing  by,  proffering 
a  crown  of  glory. 

"Back  to  the  facts"  can  only  be  an  inspiration  when 
we  remember  that  the  facts  that  are  seen  are  temporal 
but  the  facts  that  are  not  seen  eternal.  For  there  are 
spiritual  as  well  as  material  values  in  life. 

Precisely  the  opposite  course  is  that  pursued  by  a 
large  school  of  mystical  devotees,  especially  in  East- 
ern countries,  who  sacrifice  everything  else  to  union 
with  God,  or  the  supreme  reality  as  they  understand 
it,  and  so  spiritualise  and  refine  the  object  of  their 
quest,  that  in  grasping  after  an  abstraction  they  cast 
away  everything  concrete,  until  we  have  the  spectacle 
of  the  haggard  and  filthy  ascetic  sitting  cross-legged 
by  the  roadside,  with  his  mind  fixed  sternly  on  noth- 
ing whatever,  under  the  fond  delusion  that  nothing 
is  everything. 

This  may  be  an  extreme  instance,  but  the  whole 
hterature  of  mysticism  tends  to  show  that  the  con- 
scious quest  for  the  divine  union  has,  in  practice,  been 
to  a  greater  or  less  extent  vitiated  by  the  illusion  that 
to  comprehend  reality  it  is  necessary  to  exclude  some 
part  of  it,  designated  as  the  world  or  the  flesh  or  lust 
or  vanity. 

But  God,  if  He  exists,  must  be  in  the  workshop  as 
much  as  in  the  Church,  and  in  the  drawing-room  as 
He  is  on  the  mountain.  The  lives  of  saints  are  often 
no  more  satisfactory  than  those  of  worldlings  or  ma- 
terialists, and  it  would  be  better  and  wiser  to  get 


LIFE  AND  REALITY  27 

drunk  with  Falstaff  than  to  join  Simeon  Stylites  on 
his  pillar. 

The  very  nature  of  our  search  for  reality  forbids 
us  from  running  to  extremes.  That  way  lies  spiritual 
pride,  the  most  deadly,  though  the  least  ignoble  of  all 
the  vices.  To  be  healthy  is  to  be  sane,  and  the  health 
of  every  creature  consists  in  the  delicacy  and  supple- 
ness of  its  adaptation  to  reality.  To  look  the  facts 
in  the  face  and  to  order  life  accordingly  is  a  task  that 
demands  from  moment  to  moment  all  the  energy  and 
resource  that  life  has  to  command. 

There  is  no  leaving  the  helm  in  negotiating  the 
shoals  and  currents  of  time.  Man  may  rest,  but  not 
so  the  deep  in  which  he  is  borne,  and  the  lazy  or  un- 
skilful pilot  of  civilisation  may  find  his  "unsinkable" 
ship  waterlogged  and  slowly  foundering  on  a  sea  as 
clear  as  glass.  For  there  is  no  adventure  so  splendid 
or  so  fraught  with  peril  as  this  supreme  one  of  keep- 
ing right  with  reality. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   CRISIS   OF   CIVILISATION 

HERE  we  may  be  confronted  with  an  obvious 
and  natural  objection.  To  what  purpose,  it 
maj''  be  asked,  is  all  this  pother  about  getting  right 
with  realitj'  if  the  problem  has  been  with  us  since  the 
dawn  of  creation,  for  more  centuries  than  the  experi- 
ence of  the  oldest  among  us  counts  days? 

After  so  many  millions  of  years,  we  may  surely  be 
trusted  to  muddle  through  our  three-score  and  ten 
without  any  serious  fear  of  a  catastrophe.  We  shall 
no  doubt  make  mistakes,  but  we  can  put  our  trust, 
like  our  fathers  before  us,  in  coming  to  some  sort  of 
terms  with  reality,  and  leaving  to  our  descendants  a 
world  at  any  rate  not  much  worse  than  we  found  it. 

This  comforting  doctrine  is  based  upon  the  assump- 
tion that  the  thing  that  has  held  good  in  the  past  must 
of  necessity  hold  good  now  and  for  all  time.  But, 
if  our  interpretation  is  correct,  there  is  reason  for  be- 
lieving that  the  problems  confronting  humanity  to- 
day are  without  precedent  or  analogy,  except  perhaps 
in  such  circumstances  as  have  preceded  the  annihila- 
tion of  former  lords  of  creation  such  as  the  mesozoic 
lizards  to  whom  we  have  already  referred.  For  man's 
very  success  in  quickening  the  pace  of  life  has  made 
his  task  of  adaptation  to  reality  at  once  more  strenu- 

28 


THE  CRISIS  OF  CIVILISATION      29 

ous,  and  the  affair  not  of  individuals  or  nations,  who 
can  go  under  in  case  of  failure  without  injuiy  to  the 
rest,  but  of  the  whole  race,  which  may  fail  once  and 
forever. 

The  time  has,  in  fact,  come  for  life  to  take  a  step 
forward.  Adaptation  to  reality  has  hitherto  been  an 
affair  of  individuals  or  groups  like  cities,  nations  and 
Empires.  Humanity  as  a  whole  has  been  content  to 
blunder  on  without  purpose  or  cohesion,  trusting  to 
the  quarrels  of  its  members  and  the  chapter  of  acci- 
dents, dignified  with  the  names  of  God,  providence 
and  evolution,  to  make  it  all  right  in  the  end. 

There  is  something  very  satisfying  about  Tenny- 
son's sentimental  dream  of  a  far-off  divine  event  to 
which  the  whole  creation  moves.  That  is  the  spirit 
of  the  child,  who  imagines  that  it  will  always  find 
dinner  ready  at  one,  and  a  nurse  to  tuck  it  up  in  bed 
at  seven.  But  the  human  race  has  now  developed 
to  a  point  at  which  it  is  perfectly  capable  of  taking 
charge  of  its  own  destinies,  and  that,  we  believe,  is 
the  first  and  great  adaptation  that  life  is  called  upon 
to  make  to  reality. 

Now  that  we  have  grown  up  and  are  in  possession 
of  cheque-books  and  Lewisite  gas,  we  shall  come 
quickly  to  a  bad  end  if  we  go  on  behaving  as  if  we 
were  still  in  the  nursery.  It  is  high  time  to  give  up 
playing  at  animals,  and  take  serious  stock  of  our  new 
situation  before  it  is  too  late. 

The  peril  is  in  the  appalhng  inertia  of  the  human 
mind,  that  will  accept  any  version  of  the  situation  and 
find  any  excuse  rather  than  arouse  itself  to  the  grand, 


30  FACING  REALITY 

collective  effort  of  looking  a  wholly  new  set  of  facts 
in  the  face  and  making  a  revolutionary  change  in  its 
way  of  life  to  meet  them.  The  idea  that  what  was 
good  enough  for  our  fathers  will  last  out  our  time  is  so 
specious  and  comforting  that  the  brothers  of  Dives 
were  not  more  hard  than  ourselves  to  arouse  to  a 
sense  of  peril.  And  facts  of  the  most  brutal  obvious- 
ness warn  us  that  the  peril  is  deadly  and  at  the  door. 

The  horror  of  the  Great  War  and  its  aftermath  is 
surely  sufficient  demonstration  that  whatever  war  may 
have  been  in  the  past  it  is  now  worse  than  obsolete, 
and  only  serves  as  a  highly  efficient  method  of  collec- 
tive suicide.  The  agony  of  Russia  is  but  a  mild  fore- 
taste of  what  must,  as  inevitably  as  night  follows  day, 
be  the  fate  of  all  civilisation,  unless  it  can  succeed  in 
understanding  and  taking  control  of  the  dehcate  and 
dangerous  machinery  with  which  the  blind  competi- 
tion of  its  members  has  provided  it. 

All  of  us  must  remember  the  strange  state  of  mind 
in  which  most  people  faced  the  brief  interval  of  sus- 
pense between  the  launching  of  the  Austrian  ulti- 
matum and  our  o^vn  declaration  of  war  upon  Ger- 
many. In  defiance  of  all  prediction  and  probability, 
few  of  us  could  bring  our  minds  to  believe  that  so 
complete  a  reversal  of  our  experience  as  a  European 
war,  under  modern  conditions,  could  actually  be 
upon  us. 

We  remembered  Agadir,  and  how  close  we  had 
been  to  it  then,  we  thought  of  three  or  four  crises  that 
had  given  us  comfortable  thrills  before  they  were 
settled.     The  management  had  provided  so  many 


THE  CRISIS  OF  CIVILISATION      31 

illusions  of  false  fire  that  we,  seated  on  our  benches 
or  arm-chairs,  hardly  dared  to  doubt  that  this  was 
the  best  and  most  thrilling  of  all,  a  little  too  realistic, 
perhaps,  but  surely  not  the  theatre  itself  ablaze! 

Even  when  war  was  an  accompished  fact,  there  was 
a  sickly  hope  that  it  would  after  all  be  something 
polite  and  dignified;  the  army  would  no  doubt  play 
its  traditional  part  in  a  spectacular  and  pro-French 
Waterloo,  the  fleet  would  take  care  that  nothing  really 
unpleasant  should  be  allowed  to  happen  at  home,  and 
in  the  meantime  we  might  enjoy  our  newspapers, 
decide  the  county  championship,  and  make  our  watch- 
word "business  as  usual." 

In  no  case  would  the  experienced  and  gentlemanly 
people  at  the  head  of  things  allow  a  world  tragedy 
to  develop  after  it  had  become  rough  and  inconvenient 
to  everybody. 

But  develop  it  did,  year  followed  year  and  horror 
was  piled  on  horror,  fresh  combatants  were  drawn  into 
the  vortex,  famine  and  revolution  stared  mankind  in 
the  face,  the  ravages  of  plague  were  added  to  those 
of  war,  crippling  obligations  were  incurred  as  if  the 
mere  adding  of  a  nought  or  so  to  the  national  debt 
were  a  matter  too  trifling  to  call  for  comment,  be- 
reavement was  in  every  home,  men's  hearts  failing 
them  for  fear  and  looking  after  those  things  which 
were  to  come — and  yet  there  seemed  neither  the 
power  nor  even  any  serious  purpose  to  call  a  halt. 

It  was  as  if  a  motor  car  were  rushing  at  full  speed 
down  a  hill  towards  the  edge  of  a  cliff,  and  the  passen- 
gers, for  there  was  no  chauffeur,  were  all  furiously 


32  FACING  REALITY 

engaged  in  struggling  for  pennies  that  somebody  had 
dropped.  It  was  enough  triumph  to  have  gained  a 
couple  of  hundred  yards  of  Flanders  mud  at  the  cost 
of  twenty  thousand  men. 

God,  our  ancestors  would  have  said,  has  been  very 
long-suffering,  and  mankind  can  hardly  accuse 
Reality  of  unmerciful  dealing.  Even  though  we  re- 
peatedly declined  to  heed  her  knocking  at  the  door, 
and,  when  her  questionings  were  no  longer  to  be 
denied,  afforded  none  but  perverse  and  irrelevant 
answers,  she  withheld  her  hand. 

We  have  been  chastened,  but  we  live.  A  last 
chance  has  been  granted  us  to  set  our  house  in  order 
and  face  the  new  facts  of  life.  But  if  anything  can  be 
regarded  as  certain,  it  is  that  we  have  tempted  God 
or  reality  far  enough,  that  this  chance  is  indeed  the 
last. 

The  difficulty  in  proclaiming  this  truth  is  not  that 
of  convincing  the  reason.  It  is  by  no  means  original, 
it  is  in  fact  coming  to  be  almost  a  commonplace  among 
men  who  dare  to  think  for  themselves  and  are  not  the 
slaves  to  the  catchwords  of  Press  and  party.  Their 
arguments  have  been  put  forward  with  a  wealth  of 
corroborative  facts  and  statistics,  they  have  been 
urged  with  the  ardour  of  prophetic  intuition,  and  no- 
body has  seriously  undertaken  the  task  of  refuting 
them. 

The  logic  of  their  opponents  is  that  of  the  con- 
demned cell.  A  certain  event  may  be  expected  in 
the  course  of  the  morning,  but  that  is  no  reason  for 
not  making  the  best  of  a  warm  breakfast  and  the  early 


THE  CRISIS  OF  CIVILISATION      33 

edition  of  the  Daily  Mail  and  the  conversation  of  the 
chaplain.  There  is  no  sense  in  bothering  about  what 
cannot  be  helped. 

It  may  help  us  to  forget  if  we  can  manage  to  go  on 
mouthing,  like  parrots,  as  many  of  the  old  formulas 
as  possible,  and  trying  to  pretend  that  the  good  old 
days,  to  which  they  were  suited,  have  never  departed 
from  us. 

Is  there  any  one  who  seriously  maintains  that  man- 
kind stands  the  remotest  chance  of  weathering  another 
universal  squabble  such  as  that  from  which  we  have, 
at  any  rate  formally,  succeeded  in  emerging?  The 
powers  of  men  for  inflicting  injury  on  each  other  were 
multiplying  with  a  diabolical  fertility  during  the  war, 
and  there  is  reason  to  think  that  even  in  the  brief 
period  that  has  succeeded  it,  an  altogether  revolution- 
ary advance  has  been  made  in  the  art  of  human 
suicide. 

From  America  has  come  the  news  of  a  gas  capable 
of  poisoning  any  of  the  world's  greatest  cities,  with 
all  their  men,  women  and  little  children,  with  as  much 
ease  as  we  now  smoke  out  wasps'  nests.  In  aero- 
planes and  submarines  we  are  evolving  instruments 
of  war  by  which  either  side  can  deal  annihilating  blows 
at  the  civilian  life  of  the  other,  but  which  neither  can 
effectually  parry.  The  possibilities,  or  rather  cer- 
tainties, of  the  land-battleship  have  been  pointed  out 
so  vividly  and  often  that  their  repetition  would  be 
tedious. 

The  analogy  is  no  longer  that  of  children  armed 
with  revolvers,  that  is  ludicrously  under-stating  the 


34  FACING  REALITY 

case,  it  is  that  of  a  crowd  of  ill-conditioned  and  quar- 
relsome children  all  armed  with  bombs,  any  one  of 
which,  if  thrown,  is  capable  of  blowing  the  nursery 
and  all  its  inmates  to  smithereens. 

Such  is  the  crying  and  obvious  and  undisputed 
reality  of  our  time.  But  even  if,  despite  any  effort 
on  our  part,  some  god  or  miracle  were  to  intervene 
and  save  us  from  the  fruits  of  our  deeds,  and  an 
anarchy  of  nations  failed  to  eventuate  in  war,  it  is 
doubtful  whether,  in  default  of  some  deliberate 
mastery  of  mankind  over  its  own  affairs,  a  catastrophe 
could  long  be  averted. 

The  sequel  of  man's  command  over  nature,  which 
has  enabled  him  to  multiply  a  hundredfold  the  kindly 
fruits  of  the  earth,  has  entailed  the  vast  majority  of 
mankind  working  under  conditions  of  indescribable 
monotony  to  produce  a  state  of  life  in  few  respects 
better  and  in  some  appreciably  worse  than  that  of  the 
peasants  and  craftsmen  who  preceded  them. 

Of  the  surplus,  an  enormous  amount  is  thrown  into 
the  gutter,  wasted  in  lying  advertisement,  unnecessary 
reduplication,  payment  of  unproductive  middlemen, 
monopoly,  friction  and  sheer  competitive  destruction. 
At  the  same  time,  we  allow  ourselves  to  breed  with  a 
reckless  and  belauded  prodigality  until  every  multi- 
plication of  the  productive  numerator  is  cancelled  by 
a  corresponding  increase  in  the  human  denominator. 

The  only  people  who  appear  to  profit  at  all,  and 
indeed  to  excess,  by  the  conquest  of  matter  are  a 
minority  whose  ignorance  of  life  impels  them  to  in- 
dulge in  blind  and  joyless  excesses,  more  offensive  to 


THE  CRISIS  OF  CIVILISATION      35 

those  who  have  not  than  beneficial  to  those  who  have. 

This  state  of  things,  in  spite  of  every  effort  to  deny 
or  ignore  its  existence,  is  producing  an  increasing  bit- 
terness in  those  who  are  expected  to  keep  it  going  in 
order  that  others  may  enjoy  the  fruits  of  it.  And 
these,  who  are  often  expected  to  resign  themselves  to 
conditions  chiefly  differing  from  slavery  in  the  slave's 
certainty  of  employment,  are  nevertheless  armed,  with 
the  characteristic  inconsistency  of  our  civilisation, 
with  all  the  formal  powers  of  tyrants. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  whole  social  edifice  is 
rocking,  and  the  blind  and  fatal  impulse  on  the  part 
of  the  "have-nots"  to  solve  their  difficulties  by  rising 
or  voting  to  destroy  the  "haves"  may  eventuate  in  a 
tragedy  greater  than  that  of  Russia  because  our  social 
order  is  more  delicate  and  complex,  and  we  town- 
dwellers  are  even  less  fitted  to  survive  its  collapse 
than  a  race  of  peasants? 

Does  not  the  course  of  the  last  coal  strike  afford 
an  instance  of  the  same  sort  of  purposeless  drifting, 
the  same  blindness  to  facts,  that  was  the  real  tragedy 
of  the  war?  Nobody  wanted  it,  nobody  in  his  senses 
imagined  he  had  anything  to  gain  by  depriving  him- 
self and  his  fellow  men  of  a  source  of  energy  that  is 
vital  to  their  existence. 

Everybody  wanted  the  coal  to  come  up,  everybody 
professed  to  want  a  fair  and  adequate  reward  for  the 
men  who  hewed  and  fetched  it  out  of  the  depths  of  the 
earth,  the  gain  that  anybody  stood  to  derive  from  the 
dispute  was  insignificant  as  compared  with  the  loss 
caused  by  its  prolongation,  and  yet  everybody  con- 


36  FACING  REALITY 

cerned,  Government,  owners,  workmen  and  the  long- 
suffering  community,  stood  by,  week  after  week,  in 
helpless  and  brutish  apathy,  as  if  there  was  some  mys- 
terious law  of  nature  that  strikes  should  be  allowed 
to  work  their  maximum  of  mischief,  to  cripple  every 
other  industry,  to  swell  to  the  utmost  the  gaunt  and 
desperate  ranks  of  the  unemployed,  to  drive  the  men 
to  actual  starvation,  the  masters  as  near  as  practicable 
to  bankruptcy  and  the  whole  social  system  to  the  brink 
of  revolution  before  honour  and  interest  could  be 
satisfied  by  some  simple  compromise  that  ought  to 
have  been  hammered  out  long  ago  as  a  matter  of 
industrial  routine. 

There  is  no  choice  before  mankind  at  the  stage  it 
has  reached  to-day  but  to  regain,  and  that  quickly, 
its  failing  vision  of  reality,  or  to  perish  ignobly  amid 
circumstances  of  unimaginable  horror.  The  best  that 
it  can  hope  for,  in  case  of  failure,  is  for  the  few  sur- 
vivors to  start  all  over  again  in  a  doubtful  struggle 
for  survival  with  their  fellow  animals. 

Can  it  be  said  that  we  have  as  yet  awoken  to  the 
necessity  of  making  any  serious  collective  effort  to 
avert  a  disaster  which  to-morrow  it  may  be  too  late 
to  avert?  We  know,  or  could  know  if  we  cared  to 
make  use  of  our  brains  for  so  unpleasing  a  purpose, 
what  another  war  would  mean,  but  we  take  no  steps 
to  avoid  it.  We  are  more  concerned  with  the  miser- 
able jealousies  that  we  call  honour  and  the  petty  in- 
terests that  we  imagine  to  be  material  but  are  more 
often  those  of  swindlers  and  profiteers. 

We  are  horrified  at  the  prospect  of  a  Sinn  Feiner 


THE  CRISIS  OF  CIVILISATION      37 

thinking  he  has  beaten  us  or  a  German  getting  the 
best  of  a  deal,  but  we  are  ready  to  let  our  own  people 
go  roofless  rather  than  deny  the  blessings  of  our  ex- 
ploitation to  an  unwilling  people  and  a  barren  land. 

Whether  Germany  can  be  fleeced  of  a  yearly  con- 
tribution, of  doubtful  advantage  to  the  receiver,  for 
forty  years  or  sixty,  what  particular  economic  laws 
decree  that  Poles  should  be  governed  by  Germans  or 
vice  versa,  whose  honour  or  profit  demands  the  pos- 
session of  the  town  of  Fiume  or  the  district  of 
Tetschen  or  the  Island  of  Yap,  why  all  the  horses  and 
men  of  the  Entente  are  necessary  to  compel  the  Port 
of  Dantzig  to  become  a  free  city,  what  particular 
delicacy  of  national  honour  requires  that  the  impar- 
tial distribution  of  colonies  should  be  interpreted  as 
meaning  the  appropriation  of  the  whole  of  them  by  "^ 
the  victors — all  these  things  are  held  by  universal 
consent  to  be  more  urgent  and  interesting  than  the 
desperate  necessity  that  confronts  us  all. 

The  proverbial  visitor  from  another  planet  might 
well  jump  to  the  conclusion  that  the  whole  of  man- 
kind was  suffering  from  acute  suicidal  mania. 

Those  who  pay  the  devoutest  lip-homage  to  the 
name  of  Christ  are  perhaps  the  least  sensitive  to  the 
significance  of  a  warning  that  had  never  more  rele- 
vance than  now:  "They  did  eat,  they  drank,  they 
married  wives,  they  were  given  in  marriage,  until 
the  day  that  Noe  entered  into  the  ark,  and  the  flood 
came  and  destroyed  them  all.  Likewise  as  it  was  in 
the  days  of  Lot ;  they  did  eat,  they  drank,  they  bought, 
they  sold,  they  planted,  they  builded:  but  the  same 


;i'?\)845 


38  FACING  REALITY 

day  that  Lot  went  out  of  Sodom  it  rained  fire  and 
brimstone  from  heaven,  and  destroyed  them  all." 

The  very  images  are  of  a  strange  appropriateness, 
whether  the  agent  of  our  destruction  be  visualised  as 
the  obscene  flood  of  Bolshevism  or  the  rain  of  fire 
and  poison  fumes  that  we  have  to  expect  in  the  next 
war. 

The  amazing  part  of  it  all  is  that  anybody  who  is  so 
bold  as  to  look  past  the  palpable  shams  of  modern 
life,  and  endeavour  to  awaken  attention  to  realities 
that  nobody  dares  deny,  is  brushed  aside  with  the 
taunt  of  idealism  used  as  a  term  of  contempt.  Surely 
the  strangest  of  all  the  catchwords  that  pass  current 
nowadays  is  this,  that  brands  as  an  unpractical 
dreamer  any  man  who  sees  further  than  a  distorted 
looking  glass  or  refuses  to  live  in  a  fool's  paradise 
because  it  is  too  uncomfortable  a  business  to  face  the 
facts. 

Even  the  cheery  fatalism  of  the  condemned  man 
would  be  a  more  defensible  attitude  if  he  were  to 
refrain  from  shouting  "liar"  at  any  one  who  dares 
affirm  the  existence  of  the  gallows.  Nor  is  it  the 
most  effective  way  of  silencing  one  who  hints  of 
danger  to  compare  him  with  a  Prophet  whom  time 
and  Nebuchadnezzar  proved  to  have  spoken  no  more 
than  the  bare  truth. 

An  attitude  of  facing  reality  is,  however,  as  far 
removed  from  despair  as  it  is  from  the  optimism  that 
sees  everything  as  it  wants  to.  The  "dismal  Jimmy" 
or  the  man  who  considers  it  his  mission  in  life  to  make 
people's  flesh  creep,  is  more  the  product  of  a  vanity 


THE  CRISIS  OF  CIVILISATION      39 

and  dyspepsia  than  the  seer  of  things  as  they  are.  If 
a  final  catastrophe  were  inevitable,  it  would  be  doing 
no  one  any  good  to  proclaim  it.  The  most  sensible 
answer  to  "to-morrow  we  die"  is  "eat,  drink  and  be 
merry  to-day." 

But  the  present  crisis  in  human  affairs,  if  it  is 
fraught  with  danger,  affords  as  much  ground  for  hope 
as  for  apprehension.  Without  realising  the  conse- 
quences of  its  choice.  Western  civilisation  has  been 
forcing  the  pace  of  life  as  it  has  never  been  forced 
before.  It  has  chosen  to  play  for  the  highest  stakes 
and  therefore  to  take  the  utmost  risk.  If  the  penalty 
of  failure  be  the  wrecking  of  civiHsation,  the  reward 
of  success  may  be  an  abundance  and  potency  of  life 
of  which  even  now  we  hardly  dream. 

The  game  is  one  of  skill.  The  least  we  can  do  is  to 
make  ourselves  acquainted  with  its  rules  and  pitfalls, 
to  study  the  state  of  the  score  and  the  possibilities 
of  the  situation. 

What  we  have  hitherto  done  has  been  to  double 
and  redouble  both  stakes  and  difficulties  without  the 
least  consciousness  of  what  we  were  about  or  differ- 
ence in  our  methods.  The  real  origin  of  our  present 
crisis  has  lain  in  an  extension  of  our  command  over 
matter  of  headlong  rapidity,  and  a  use  of  it  as  reckless 
and  haphazard  as  the  extravagances  of  a  sailor  with 
a  year's  pay  and  a  few  days'  shore  leave. 

By  our  own  action,  the  relations  of  life  to  reality 
have  undergone  a  revolutionary  change  without  our 
hitherto  having  made  any  serious  attempt  to  compre- 
hend or  adapt  ourselves  to  the  new  situation,  and  this 


40  FACING  REALITY 

in  despite  of  the  fact  that  failure  of  hfe  to  keep  pace 
with  reahty  means  death.  The  partial  anarchy  of 
our  social  and  the  complete  anarchy  of  our  interna- 
tional relations  are  adaptations  to  a  struggle  for  sur- 
vival more  bestial  than  human. 

The  dragons  who  tore  each  other  to  pieces  in  their 
primeval  slime  were  pursuing  exactly  the  same  line 
of  conduct  as  the  armed  and  cultured  powers  of  the 
twentieth  century,  and  with  more  excuse,  for  the 
dragon  could  at  least  plead  that  his  conduct  was 
adapted  to  the  requirements  of  a  dragon-lorded  world. 

It  is  not  only  in  these  great  affairs  that  we  manifest 
our  inability  to  keep  pace  with  the  facts  of  life.  An 
advance  in  material  power  should  carry  with  it  a  cor- 
responding increase  in  mental  capacity.  This  is  a 
necessity  which,  if  it  has  not  been  entirely  ignored, 
has  at  least  received  wofully  inadequate  recognition. 

Our  educational  schemes  have  tended  to  concen- 
trate on  still  further  increasing  the  command  of  mind 
over  matter,  we  seek  to  rear  up  technical  and  commer- 
cial prodigies  for  the  sole  purpose  of  tending  machines 
or  acquiring  power  in  the  shape  of  money,  forgetting 
that  a  brute  is  never  more  dangerous  to  himself  and 
his  fellows  than  when  he  is  equipped  with  the  powers 
of  a  demigod. 

Samuel  Butler  has  made  a  parable  concerning  a 
race  of  men  who,  on  finding  their  mechanical  powers 
increasing,  deliberately  took  stock  of  the  situation, 
and  came  to  a  reasoned  conclusion  that  the  benefits 
they  were  likely  to  derive  from  the  use  of  machinery 
were  outweighed  by  its  dangers.    Men,  they  thought, 


THE  CRISIS  OF  CIVILISATION      41 

would  sooner  or  later  become  not  the  masters  but  the 
slaves  of  their  own  inventions,  and  with  a  view  to 
averting  such  an  evil,  they  smashed  every  machine 
to  pieces  and  forbade,  by  the  most  stringent  laws,  any- 
body making  or  inventing  one  in  the  future. 

The  extravagance  of  Butler's  humour  has  blinded 
most  readers  to  the  seriousness  of  his  underlying  idea. 
We  naturally  take  with  a  grain  of  salt  the  doctrine 
that  machines  are  capable  of  assuming  a  life  of  their 
own,  and  forcing  their  makers  to  become  their  slaves. 
But  it  is  a  fact  of  vital  importance  that  a  man  who 
cannot  master  his  own  machine  is  something  worse 
than  a  slave,  and  that  mankind,  in  similar  circum- 
stances, is  no  better  off  than  an  engineer  caught  be- 
tween his  wheels. 

Butler's  imaginary  Erewhonians  were  at  least 
superior  to  us  in  this,  that  they  came  to  a  definite 
decision  for  adapting  themselves  to  a  new  order  of 
reahty.  That  decision  may  have  been  as  perverse 
and  extravagant  as  you  please,  but  it  was  at  least 
saner  and  more  reasonable  than  our  own  of  calling 
full  speed  all  round  and  leaving  the  result  to  chance. 

^lachines  are  by  no  means  the  only  human  contri- 
vances whose  reckless  misuse  is  a  danger  to  civilisa- 
tion. If  there  is  a  sense  in  which  we  are  the  slaves  of 
matter  there  is  one  just  as  true  in  which  we  are  the 
slaves  of  words. 

Every  word  was  originally  a  generalisation  from 
reality,  a  rough  and  ready  way  in  which  one  life  tried 
to  pass  on  to  another  some  part  of  its  thought  and 
experience.    They  are  at  best  but  imperfect  symbols. 


42  FACING  REALITY 

mere  hints  at  a  reality  which  they  neither  compre- 
hend nor  explain.  But  even  from  the  earliest  times, 
words  have  had  a  way  of  breaking  loose  from  their 
moorings  and  of  coming  to  exist  for  their  own  sake, 
as  a  substitute  and  not  a  symbol  for  reality. 

The  legends  of  most  peoples  are  rife  with  mysteri- 
ous words,  whose  mere  repetition  confers  a  tre- 
mendous power.  Ali  Baba  chances  to  say  "open 
sesame!"  and  lo,  the  magic  doors  slide  apart  and  the 
treasure  lies  revealed.  We  aspire  to  put  words  to 
quite  as  startling  uses,  only  in  a  less  sensational  way. 

As  we  lose  touch  with  reality,  which  is  only  another 
way  of  saying  "as  we  lose  sight  of  God,"  we  take  to 
ourselves  words  in  the  hkeness  of  things,  and  bow 
down  before  the  works  of  our  own  minds.  When  we 
want  to  embarrass  a  statesman  or  party,  for  reasons 
of  our  own,  by  attacking  all  expenditure  of  public 
money,  necessary  or  unnecessary,  we  have  only  to  coin 
a  word  like  "squandermania"  or  adopt  one  like 
"wastrel"  and  the  thing  is  done. 

If  we  want  to  reduce  a  man  to  lifelong  imprison- 
ment and  slavery,  any  little  prejudice  that  may  still 
survive  against  these  formidable  things  is  easily  re- 
moved by  altering  the  word  for  them  to  "preventive 
detention"  and  even  calling  the  prison  a  hotel.  Simi- 
larly, if  we  wish  to  retain  scientific  torture  in  our 
prisons,  it  is  more  tactful  to  speak  of  it  as  the  "cat." 

The  opinion  of  most  humane  people  and  both  re- 
ports of  the  latest  Poor  Law  Commission  may  have 
demanded  the  abolition  of  workhouses,  and  this  has 


THE  CRISIS  OF  CIVILISATION      43 

been  accomplished  with  a  stroke  of  the  pen  by  turn- 
ing them  into  guardians'  institutes. 

The  pohcy  of  protecting  industry  acquired  a  bad 
name  in  the  forties,  but  that  is  no  reason  for  our  not 
reintroducing  it  under  the  guise  of  reforming  the 
tariff.  And  naked  plunder  is  more  likely  to  be 
palatable  if  we  call  it  a  scientific  readjustment  of  taxa- 
tion, just  as  the  Romans  were  readj'^  to  take  back  their 
kings  as  soon  as  they  called  themselves  Emperors. 

There  is  no  surer  sign  of  a  lost  touch  with  realitj^ 
than  the  tendency  to  see  and  think  only  in  terms  of 
words.  It  is  a  disease  from  which  no  period  has  been 
entirely  free,  but  in  recent  times  it  has  found  a  fertile 
breeding  ground  in  the  mass  of  ephemeral  literature 
that  is  produced  and  forgotten  with  ever-increasing 
rapidity.  And  this  is  the  great  difficulty  that  one 
meets  at  the  outset  of  any  attempt  to  shew  the  dangers 
of  the  present  situation  and  to  awaken  a  sense  of 
reality  before  it  is  too  late. 

Any  reading  of  the  situation  that  imphes  the  neces- 
sity for  strenuous  effort  is  too  uncomfortable  to  be 
considered  on  its  merits,  and  a  big  word  is  as  effective 
a  silencer  as  a  big  stone.  There  is  a  large  choice — 
"croaker,"  "Jeremiah,"  "pinchbeck  Carlyle,"  "ideal- 
ist," "apocalyptic,"  "hysterical,"  according  to  the 
tastes  and  probable  education  of  the  audience.  If  by 
these  means  it  were  possible  to  alter  the  facts  them- 
selves, there  would  be  no  more  to  be  said. 


CHAPTER  III 

POISONING   THE  WELLS 

HITHERTO  we  have  written  of  the  failure  of 
life  to  adapt  itself  to  reality  as  if  it  were  merely 
a  matter  of  incapacity  or  ignorance.  But  on  closer 
examination  we  shall  find  it  to  be  largely  a  result  of 
deliberate  human  contrivance.  Men  fail  to  see  the 
world  in  which  they  live  because  they  find  that  it  suits 
their  personal  interests  to  throw  dust  into  each  other's 
eyes. 

If  you  want  to  pick  your  neighbour's  pockets,  it 
will  be  all  to  your  advantage  to  blind  him  first,  and  in 
a  social  order  where  a  man  thrives  more  by  picking 
his  neighbour's  pocket  than  by  lendmg  him  a  hand, 
there  is  likely  sooner  or  later  to  be  a  veritable  epidemic 
of  blindness. 

When,  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
a  series  of  great  inventions  began  to  revolutionise  life 
and  incidentally  to  throw  the  whole  social  order  into 
the  melting  pot,  a  doctrine  became  fashionable  that 
can  best  be  described  as  one  of  mystical  anarchy.  The 
worst  way  of  dealing  with  the  new  situation  was  to 
make  any  attempt  to  control  it,  the  police  would  see 
that  every  man  was  allowed  to  keep  what  he  could 
get  and  the  free  play  of  an  enlightened  selfishness — 
as  if  selfishness  were  compatible  with  enlightenment 
— would  do  the  rest. 

44 


POISONING  THE  WELLS  45 

The  idea  was  that  in  a  peaceful  state  of  society 
every  man  would  find  it  to  his  interest  to  make  him- 
self as  useful  as  possible  to  all  the  rest,  the  vendor  of 
shoddy  would  drive  his  customers  to  his  honest  rival 
and  the  profiteer  would  soon  be  forced  to  lower  his 
prices  by  competition.  Men  knew  what  was  good  for 
them  and  they  would  get  it  in  a  free  market  from 
those  who  could  supply  it. 

Unfortunately  this  state  of  things  had  no  existence 
except  in  the  imagination  of  theorists,  and  was  one 
of  those  facile  simpHfications  of  reahty  which  leave 
half  the  actual  and  probable  facts  of  life  out  of  the 
reckoning.  It  was  really  an  unconscious  excuse  of 
the  wiU  to  avoid  the  strenuous  effort  demanded  by 
the  new  situation.  It  would  be  so  convenient  if  the 
industrial  revolution  could,  by  solving  its  own  prob- 
lems, relieve  society  at  large  from  the  necessity  of 
self-determination. 

Unfortunately  selfishness  in  real  life  is  neither 
beneficent  nor  enlightened.  The  selfishness  of  A.  may 
aim  with  such  enhghtenment  as  it  possesses  at  the  un- 
enlightenment  of  all  the  rest  of  the  alphabet,  espe- 
ciallj"  if  A.  has  shoddy  to  unload.  The  profiteer  may 
not  have  his  prices  driven  down  at  all,  if  the  selfishness 
of  his  rivals  leads  them  to  see  the  advantage  of  form- 
ing a  trust  or  ring  to  fleece  the  public,  instead  of 
competing  with  each  other. 

The  results  of  the  new  "Icdssez  faire''  ought  to  have 
been  apparent  from  the  first,  if  it  had  suited  men  to 
open  their  eyes  to  what  was  going  on  all  round  them 
instead  of  taking  their  reahty  from  books.    But  this 


46  FACING  REALITY 

was  precisely  what  did  not  suit  those  whose  will  was 
effective  in  ordering  public  affairs,  the  newly  rich 
manufacturers,  who  were  making  money  hand  over 
fist  out  of  the  new  machinerj^  and  the  middle  class 
that  was  coming  to  its  period  of  greatest  power  and 
prosperity  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

As  for  the  old  squii'es,  fresh  from  the  plunder  of 
the  common  lands,  they  had  their  own  fortunes  to 
make  and  their  own  people  to  keep  under,  so  that, 
with  the  convenient  exception  of  the  Corn  Laws,  they 
were  ready  to  stand  in  with  this  new  race  of  hustlers 
however  much  they  might  dislike  them  personally, 
and  to  give  a  vague  and  tacit  assent  to  the  new,  ruth- 
less political  economy  of  individualism. 

It  was  enough  that  in  the  prolonged  but,  according 
to  modern  standards,  mild  and  ineffective  killing 
match  that  settled  the  accounts  of  one  or  two  million 
soldiers  in  the  generation  f ollo^ving  the  French  Revo^ 
lution,  the  new  machines  of  Lancashire  enabled  that 
minority  of  Enghshmen  who  had  anything  except 
honour  to  lose  to  derive  a  winning  advantage  over 
the  adventurer  who  was  bleeding  France  to  death. 

The  kind  offices  of  the  French  privateers,  or 
licensed  pirates,  had  the  added  advantage  of  driving 
up  the  price  of  corn  to  such  a  height  that  the  land- 
owners basked  in  a  veritable  paradise  of  prosperity. 
Nobody,  at  least  nobody  who  counted,  cared  much 
to  know  that  this  prosperity  of  a  few  was  built  upon 
the  abject  misery,  without  a  precedent  in  our  history, 
of  peasant  and  workman. 


POISONING  THE  WELLS  47 

It  is  well  known  now,  by  any  one  who  cares  to  look 
up  the  facts,  that  little  children,  often  no  more  than 
infants,  were  forced,  in  their  multitudes,  to  work  from 
early  morning  till  late  night  amid  unf  enced  machinery 
and  under  the  stimulus  of  the  rod  until  those  hardy 
enough  to  survive  were  stunted  in  body  and  mind, 
how  the  enlightened  selfishness  of  the  parents  backed 
up  the  enlightened  selfishness  of  the  employer,  how 
any  attempt  to  mitigate  the  horror  of  life  in  the  new 
manufacturing  districts  was  scouted  as  a  vicious  in- 
terference with  the  free  play  of  economic  laws,  and 
how,  finally,  the  old  English  countryside  of  roast  beef 
and  plum  pudding  became  a  squalid  Hell  in  which  a 
landless  and  pauperised  peasantry  toiled  from  the 
cradle  to  the  grave  on  just  enough,  if  they  were  lucky, 
to  keep  them  alive  and  useful. 

Such  were  the  first  fruits  of  the  change  in  the  con- 
ditions of  life  brought  about  by  the  new  conquest  of 
matter  by  machinery,  and  it  is  not  without  its  signifi- 
cance that  at  the  very  time  that  things  were  at  their 
worst,  the  most  complacent  theories  were  being  formu- 
lated and  passing  muster  about  the  necessity  of  leav- 
ing everything  to  look  after  itself. 

Even  when  the  lower  class  was  getting  sufficiently 
dangerous  to  compel  a  certain  bettering  of  its  condi- 
tion in  defiance  of  the  economic  laws  that  its  masters 
had  laid  down,  it  was  long  before  anybody  was  bold 
enough  to  say  that  the  whole  idea  of  letting  things 
drift  was  a  dangerous  lie  put  forward,  whether  con- 
sciously or  not,  for  interested  purposes,  and  that  the 


48  FACING  REALITY 

selfishness  of  everybody,  allowed  free  play,  must  end 
in  the  suicide  of  all. 

As  the  "century  of  progress"  wore  on,  it  became 
apparent  that  the  selfishness  that  had  been  going  to 
work  such  wonderful  results  was  a  more  complex  and 
less  calculable  thing  than  the  honest  chaffering  of 
traders  in  the  market  that  inspired  the  French  theo- 
rist, Bastiat,  to  an  almost  lyrical  ecstasy  in  his  Eco- 
nomic Harmonies. 

The  game  of  competition  might  produce  incal- 
culable results  when  the  art  of  queering  the  pitch  had 
been  studied  and  mastered  by  most  of  the  players. 
It  became  a  question  of  maintaining  not  only  that 
universal  selfishness  would  work  everybody's  benefit, 
but  that  universal  lying  would,  by  some  magic  proc- 
ess, lead  everybody  to  the  truth.  Such  was  the  power 
of  words  that  even  this  last  marvel  was  not  too  much 
for  human  consumption. 

Free  discussion  and  a  free  press  were  the  talismans 
that  were  to  do  as  much  for  the  perfecting  of  the  mind 
as  free  competition  for  the  needs  of  the  body.  The 
selfishness  of  every  one  would  be  enlightened,  and 
therefore  every  one  would  be  happy. 

The  respectable  and  bewhiskered  gentlemen  who 
flourished  in  the  days  of  Albert  the  Good  may  have 
had  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent  in  pushing  their  own 
interests,  but  they  certainly  had  more  than  the  inno- 
cence of  the  dove  in  believing  any  version  of  the  facts 
that  would  justify  them  in  so  doing.  The  vision  that 
they  formed,  with  all  the  unquestionable  sincerity  of 


POISONING  THE  WELLS  49 

men  who  know  what  they  want  to  believe,  was  one  of 
charming  simphcity. 

Once  remove  the  tax  on  printed  matter,  which  is 
even  to  this  day  supposed  to  be  the  same  thing  as  a 
tax  on  knowledge,  and  allow  every  one  to  write  what 
he  likes,  and  the  moment  any  lie  or  sophism  is  put 
forward  by  one  writer,  it  will  be  in  some  other  writer's 
interest  to  expose  it,  leaving  it  not  to  the  Lord  but 
to  the  public,  which  for  this  purpose  was  assumed  to 
have  much  tlie  same  judicial  capacity,  to  decide 
between  the  two. 

In  the  same  way  the  advertisement  columns  of  the 
press  would  enable  the  beneficent  egotists  who  had 
goods  to  sell  to  submit  them  to  the  choice,  enlightened 
presumably  by  other  advertisements,  of  those  whose 
needs  impelled  them  to  buy.  In  short  a  general 
demand  for  truth  in  the  open  market  would  inevitably 
guarantee  the  supply. 

It  is  curious  that  none  of  these  naive  optimists 
appear  to  have  grasped  the  significance  of  a  quaint 
old  story  for  which  most  of  them,  nevertheless,  cher- 
ished a  pious  admiration.  This  story  relates  how 
two  travellers  arrived  at  a  large  and  open  market, 
in  the  province  of  Beelzebub,  at  which  goods  of  every 
kind  were  being  offered  for  sale.  On  being  asked 
what  particular  commodity  they  had  to  supply,  they 
answered  that  they  had  the  Truth. 

Not  only  was  there  not  the  least  demand  for  this 
line  of  goods,  but  the  worthy  chaff erers  quickly  had 
the  sense  to  perceive  that  competitors  of  this  kind 
would  knock  the  bottom  out  of  the  market  if  they  got 


50  FACING  REALITY 

their  goods  into  circulation — an  improbable  contin- 
gency, as  the  people  were  more  easily  moved  to  mob 
than  to  patronise  such  traitors  to  their  beneficent  and 
respected  sovereign,  the  Prince  of  Lies. 

John  Bunyan  had  gone  to  the  root  of  the  matter 
long  before  a  free  market,  commercial  and  intellectual, 
had  come  to  be  the  panacea  it  was  to  our  grandfathers. 
Even  if  there  were  the  least  chance  of  supply  follow- 
ing demand  in  the  matter  of  truth,  there  is  certainly 
none  at  all  when  neither  any  serious  demand  for  truth 
exists,  nor  any  capacity  of  judging  whether  the  thing 
supphed  be  the  truth  or  no. 

It  is  a  great  mistake,  and  one  that  every  recent 
discovery  in  psychology  has  tended  to  dissipate,  that 
truth  in  any  form  is  what  the  majority  of  men  desire, 
whatever  they  may  profess  or  persuade  themselves. 
Most  people  have  a  pretty  shrewd  notion  of  what  they 
want  to  be  told,  and  it  is  just  that,  and  not  any  tedious 
or  disquieting  impartiality  about  the  facts  that  they 
require  from  their  favourite  author  or  newspaper. 
Pilgrims  who  go  about  hawking  the  truth  are,  at  best, 
bores  and  more  probably  offensive,  blasphemous 
persons. 

But  there  is  no  need  to  go  to  the  psycho-analysts 
for  confirmation  of  what  must  be  glaringly  obvious  to 
any  one  who  has  the  sense  to  see  or  think  for  himself 
instead  of  swallowing  his  ideas  whole  from  books. 

Ask  the  citizen  who  buys  his  party  paper  whether 
he  desires  to  have  the  facts  presented  to  him  from  any 
point  of  view  but  his  own,  whether  he  buys  his  Daily 
Herald  for  a  fair  sympathetic  study  of  the  case  for 


POISONING  THE  WELLS  51 

the  owners  or  goes  to  his  Morning  Post  in  order  to 
understand  what  inspired  men  hke  Pearse  and  Plun- 
kett  to  go  dehberately  to  a  certain  death  in  order  that 
Ireland  might  hve. 

"Yes,  but,"  you  say,  "it  is  just  by  such  a  conflict 
of  opinions  that  men  are  able  to  arrive  at  the  truth." 
Indeed!  And  how  many  citizens  are  there  who 
habitually  balance  the  opinions  of  Post  and  Herald, 
or  any  two  such  conflicting  interpreters  of  the  truth, 
either  at  home,  or  in  the  free  libraries,  or  anywhere 
else? 

How  many  fine  old  English  gentlemen  are  there 
who  will  allow  a  Bolshevist  rag  to  come  into  their 
houses,  and  how  many  workmen  of  advanced  views 
would  incur  the  wrath  of  their  comrades  by  patronis- 
ing one  of  the  organs  of  capitahsm?  And  even  if  any 
squire  or  navvy  could  rise  to  such  miracles  of  impar- 
tiality, it  is  difficult  to  see  how  he  would  be  the  better 
when  one  man,  who  has  taken  the  measure  of  his 
intelhgence,  is  paid  to  shout  in  his  ears  that  black  is 
blue  while  another  bawls  out  that  it  is  a  particularly 
vivid  scarlet. 

There  are  other  ways  of  suppressing  free  discussion 
than  by  burning  and  imprisonment,  and  they  are  most 
of  all  patronised  by  those  who  profess  to  be  its  most 
devoted  advocates.  Heresy  hunting  was  one  of  the 
most  popular  of  mid-Victorian  pursuits.  When  John 
Ruskin  ventured,  in  a  moderate  and  persuasive  series 
of  essays,  to  question  the  assumptions  of  the  dominant 
''laissez  faire"  school,  such  pressure  was  brought  to 


52  FACING  REALITY 

bear  on  the  magazine  in  which  they  appeared  that  the 
articles  had  to  be  discontinued. 

He  was  fortunate,  doubtless  owing  to  the  reputa- 
tion he  had  acquired  as  a  critic  of  art,  to  get  his  views 
accepted  for  publication  at  all.  For,  in  a  society  ruled 
by  competition,  it  is  hopeless  to  expect  any  one  to  go 
to  the  expense  of  printing  what  is  not  likely  to  sell, 
and  where  every  one  is  agreed  in  demanding  smooth 
things  from  their  prophets,  he  who  is  so  unbusiness- 
like as  to  prophesy  rough  ones  can  hardly  be  sur- 
prised if  he  finds  himself  crying  in  the  wilderness. 

We  have  not  yet  questioned  the  assumption  that 
those  who  supply  goods  or  services  will  make  it  their 
business  to  study  and  wait  upon  demand.  Only 
shortly  before  the  war,  a  play  obviously  aiming  at  the 
exposure  of  the  latest  newspaper  methods  was  called 
What  the  Public  Wants,  a  title  which  every  efficient 
journalist  and  business  man  must  know  to  be  hope- 
lessly out  of  date.  It  is  not  a  question  of  finding 
what  the  public  wants  and  supplying  it,  but  of  pro- 
ducing the  goods  and  making  the  public  want  them. 

The  whole  modern  art  of  advertisement  is  founded 
upon  this  assumption.  Nobody,  on  his  own  initiative, 
wants  to  buy  a  box  of  unappetising  globules,  consist- 
ing principally  of  bread  and  soap,  and  placed  on  the 
market  at  anything  exceeding  twenty  times  what  they 
cost  to  produce.  He  is  probably  well  and  has  no  need 
of  medicine,  and  even  if  he  were  sick  the  concoction 
might  as  well  be  devoured  by  the  pig  for  any  good 
it  is  likely  to  do  him. 

But  here  steps  in  the  enlightened  egotist.    If  a  man 


POISONING  THE  WELLS  53 

is  not  ill,  he  can  often  be  frightened  or  suggested  into 
believing  that  he  is,  and  ultimately  into  falling  sick 
in  good  earnest. 

The  first  thing  to  do,  as  the  distribution  of  germs 
or  fouling  of  the  water-mains  is  ruled  out  by  the  law, 
is  to  employ  the  art  of  suggestion,  in  which  the  pill- 
vendor  has  had  more  occasion  to  perfect  himself  than 
that  of  healing,  in  order  to  create  a  morbid  search  for 
symptoms  and  so  to  reduce  his  victim  to  such  a  state 
that  he  may  either  be  or  imagine  himself  to  be  (it 
does  not  matter  which)  in  need  of  a  remedy.  We 
have  then  to  convince  him,  not  by  reason,  but  by  as- 
saulting him  by  day  from  hoardings  and  by  night  from 
sky  signs  that  our  remedy  has  been  tried  and  tested 
for  generations,  that  it  represents  the  very  last  word 
of  modem  science,  and  that  it  is  being  thrown  on  the 
market  for  a  tenth  of  its  value. 

Pictures  will  be  exhibited  of  surging  crowds,  im- 
maculately dressed,  fighting  each  other  to  get  at  the 
pills,  of  full-bosomed  nurses  presenting  them  with  a 
lascivious  smirk,  and  of  Socrates,  described  as  the 
great  Athenian  sage,  recommending  them  to  his 
disciples. 

You  have  then  to  get  a  needy  doctor,  or  still  better, 
such  an  expert  as  the  actress  or  cricketer  of  the  hour, 
to  sign,  for  what  money  they  can  succeed  in  extract- 
ing, a  letter  such  as  public  opinion  expects  a  doctor 
or  an  actress  or  a  cricketer  to  write,  extolling  the 
virtues  of  the  pills.  It  matters  not  in  the  least  that 
these  opinions  are  well  known  to  be  written  for 
money,  the  mere  name  of  Georgette  Sansmoral  or 


54  FACING  REALITY 

"Trump"  Yorker  will  carry  a  conviction  that  lies  too 
deep  for  argument.  And  so  long  as  soap  and  bread 
last,  the  nasty  compound  will  go  down,  in  the  most 
liberal  sense,  by  the  million. 

So  gullible  is  pubhc  opinion  that  when  a  medical 
journal,  some  time  ago,  published  an  analysis  of  a 
number  of  these  concoctions,  and  exposed  to  the  last 
grain  and  scruple  their  widely  advertised  pretensions, 
the  public  was  stoHdly  unimpressed  and  the  sale  went 
on  as  merrily  as  ever. 

So  easy  is  it  to  manipulate  public  opinion  in  the 
cause  of  private  interest.  What  applies  in  commerce 
at  large  holds  good  in  that  particular  branch  of  it 
wliich  is  concerned  in  supplying  the  people  with  such 
printed  matter  as  they  can  be  induced  to  pay  for. 

The  notion  of  a  free  and  impartial  press,  sifting  the 
false  from  the  true,  proving  all  things  and  holding 
fast  that  which  is  good,  is  thus  seen  to  be  the  veriest 
chimera.  And  the  problem  of  the  press  is  compli- 
cated by  another  factor  that  is  absent  from  most  other 
business  transactions.  Those  who  supply  the  public 
with  news  have  often  other  motives  than  that  of  sell- 
ing as  many  of  their  goods  for  as  big  a  profit  as 
possible. 

So  great  a  power  does  the  manipulation  of  public 
opinion  confer,  that  it  may  often  be  to  the  ultimate 
advantage  of  rich  and  unscrupulous  people  to  guide 
it  to  their  own  ends.  And  even  without  conscious 
collusion,  there  is  an  instinct  of  self-preservation 
among  those  with  wealth  to  lose  that  makes  them  com- 


POISONING  THE  WELLS  55 

bine  as  one  man  against  anything  that  threatens  to 
deprive  them  of  it. 

But  even  where  such  a  sinister  bias  is  absent,  com- 
merce and  hterature  are  now  so  intimately  mixed  as 
to  render  most  matter  that  appears  in  print  about  as 
rehable  a  guide  either  in  fact  or  opinion  as  a  compass 
surrounded  by  a  ring  of  powerful  magnets. 

It  is  not  even  as  if  the  reader  were  the  first  person 
to  be  considered.  To  the  modern  editor  his  impor- 
tance is  second  to  that  of  the  advertiser,  and  the  read- 
ing matter  is  often  little  more  than  a  decoy  to  lure 
the  reader  within  range  of  the  advertisements.  And 
when  the  advertiser  is  the  all-important  but  unseen 
power  to  be  propitiated,  it  would  be  sheer  madness 
to  allow  anything  to  get  between  the  covers  calculated 
to  oflPend  or  drive  him  away. 

Ask  a  newspaper  to  publish  any  attack  upon  a 
patent  medicine  or  secret  memory  system  that  is  gen- 
erously advertised  in  its  columns  I  You  might  as  well 
expect  the  landlord  of  a  public  house  to  allow  his 
premises  to  be  used  for  propaganda  purposes  by  Mr. 
Pussyfoot  Johnson. 

There  is  another  handicap  of  a  less  obvious  nature 
which  necessarily  tends  to  make  organs  of  public 
opinion  into  blind  leaders  of  the  blind.  They  are  not 
only  fettered  to  the  opinions  of  their  proprietors,  but 
to  an  insane  and  rigid  consistency  with  their  own.  For 
though  a  journalist  may  drift  from  Post  to  Herald, 
from  Tablet  to  Taller,  according  to  his  gifts  and  the 
state  of  the  market,  yet  for  the  duration  of  his  em- 
ployment with  any  particular  organ  he  finds  himself 


56  FACING  REALITY 

saddled  with  a  more  awful  infallibiity  than  many 
devout  theists  have  imposed  upon  their  Supreme 
Being.  He  is  never  allowed  to  form  a  candid  or  im- 
partial estimate  of  any  new  situation  that  may  arise. 
With  him  the  verdict  must  always  precede  the  trial. 
Whatever  may  happen  only  proves  that  he,  or  his 
paper,  has  been  right  all  along. 

Mr.  Garvin  of  the  Observer,  perhaps  the  most 
statesmanlike  and  best  informed  of  present-day  leader 
writers,  happens  to  hold  a  brief  against  the  Poles. 
When,  therefore,  the  Red  Army  is  at  the  gates  of 
Warsaw,  and  a  dire  catastrophe  threatens  Europe,  it 
is  forced  on  him  to  maintain  that  this  necessary  result 
of  Polish  Chauvinism  will  be  no  bad  thing  after  all. 
And  it  is  also  necessary  for  him  to  push  to  lengths  of 
more  than  ordinary  disingenuousness  that  accursed 
word  partition,  in  order  to  find  excuse  for  forcing 
under  Prussian  rule  communities  of  Poles  who  will 
fight  to  the  death  rather  than  submit. 

"Let  us  be  proved  right,"  is  the  motto  of  journal- 
ism, "though  the  Heavens  fall!"  It  matters  not  that 
Irish  opinion  has  been  inflamed  to  a  madness  of  un- 
compromising hatred,  largely  by  articles  in  the  press 
twitting  Irish  Protestants  with  being  wooden-gunned 
braggarts,  Irish  Catholics  as  unfit  and  even  unwill- 
ing to  govern  themselves,  and  predicting  the  amena- 
bility of  either  side  to  a  few  vigorous  kicks  with  the 
jack  boot.  It  matters  not  that  the  predetermined 
championship,  by  certain  organs  of  upper-class  opin- 
ion, of  General  Dyer's  khaki  terror,  has  seriously  en- 
dangered our  Indian  Empire. 


POISONING  THE  WELLS  57 

The  mere  fact  that  we  have  excited  untoward  pas- 
sions gives  us  a  further  excuse  for  abusing  their 
owners,  of  showing  how  right  we  were  all  along  in  our 
Devil's  work.  And  not  the  least  of  the  tragedies  con- 
nected with  the  war  is  the  fact  that  an  experience, 
which  ought  at  least  to  have  left  one  and  all  of  us  who 
survived  changed  and  wiser  beings,  has  in  fact  only- 
served,  as  far  as  our  press  is  concerned,  to  harden 
every  prejudice  and  confirm  every  vulgar  shibboleth. 

Imperialists  and  free-traders,  old  liberals  and 
young  Tories — they  are  up  and  at  it  again  as  if  the 
war  had  been  some  irrelevant  interruption  of  their  nor- 
mal activities.  If,  like  the  Bourbons,  they  have  neither 
learnt  nor  forgotten  anything,  it  is  because,  at  a  time 
when  it  was  vital  to  do  both,  the  conditions  under 
which  they  labour  have  forbidden  them  to  do  either. 

How,  under  these  circumstances,  truth  or  sincerity 
can  be  expected  to  characterise  modern  journalism  it 
is  difficult  to  imagine,  and,  indeed,  the  only  cause  for 
surprise  is  that  so  much  of  real  value  does  find  its  way 
into  print,  and  that  the  English  press  is  probably  more 
free  than  any  other  from  direct  and  cynical  corrup- 
tion. For  in  spite  of  every  inducement  to  the  con- 
trary there  is  about  the  art  of  writing  a  dignity  which 
impels  some  men  to  express  the  best  that  is  in  them 
for  its  own  sake.  But  of  the  bulk  of  journahsm  it  may 
fairly  be  said  that  it  is  shoddy  of  a  more  ephemeral 
quality  than  gets  produced  in  most  other  businesses, 
for  the  reason  that  every  man  is  able  to  find  out  sooner 
or  later  whether  a  tin  of  corned  beef  makes  him  ill  or 
a  pair  of  boots  comes  to  pieces,  but  no  one  knows  when 


58  FACING  REALITY 

he  is  poisoning  his  mind  and  few  think  it  worth  bother- 
ing about.  A  craving  for  bad  hterature  is  hke  one  for 
drink,  the  more  harm  the  commodity  does  the  more  it 
is  in  demand. 

To  one  who  knows  something  of  the  inner  working 
of  journahsm,  the  perusal  of  seemingly  innocent  and 
respectable  printed  matter  is  often  something  between 
a  Chinese  puzzle  and  a  nightmare.  Here  is  a  book 
that  you  have  just  tossed  aside  as  the  most  blatant  of 
trash  lauded  to  the  skies  as  a  work  of  heaven- 
inspired  genius,  and  you  are  not  surprised  to  find 
another  column,  on  another  page,  openly  advertising 
this  same  book  and  perhaps  other  products  of  the 
firm. 

You  then  read  an  authoritative  article  on  Traheme 
by  a  man  of  your  acquaintance,  an  excellant  fellow, 
whose  initials  are  a  middle-class  household  word,  and 
you  know  why  a  week  ago  he  asked  you  for  the  loan 
of  "that  fellow  Trevaskis  or  Trelawney  or  whatever 
his  name  was  that  somebody  resurrected  a  few  years 
ago — I  haven't  had  time  to  tackle  him."  Then  you 
read  a  balanced  but  none  the  less  damaging  estimate 
of  a  pubhc  man  with  whom  not  the  editor,  but  the 
proprietor  of  the  group  of  papers  to  which  his  be- 
longs, is  out  to  get  even. 

Then  comes  a  veracious  account,  by  our  Parlia- 
mentary correspondent,  of  how  our  high-minded  and 
eloquent  National  Tapers  have,  as  they  have  in  every 
previous  issue,  crushed,  flattened  and  annihilated  the 
wretched  Independent  Tadpoles,  and  lastly  you  come 
to    "Peeping    Tom's    corner,"    hinting    at    private 


POISONING  THE  WELLS  59 

scandals  whose  publication  in  any  form  would  be  a 
wanton  outrage  were  it  not  for  your  certain  knowl- 
edge that  the  captain  who  was  horsewhipped  in  the 
Row  and  the  duchess  who  bathes  naked  in  the  moon- 
light have  no  originals  save  in  the  fertile  brain  of  one 
of  the  staff. 

But  in  calling  attention  to  these  developments  of 
commercial  anarchy,  we  must  be  careful  to  avoid  the' 
grave  pitfall  of  allowing  an  exposure  of  the  system  to 
degenerate  into  an  attack  upon  those  who  are  less 
its  agents  than  its  victims.  It  would  be  a  perversion 
of  facts  as  inexcusable  as  any  if  we  tried  to  brand  the 
whole  business  community  as  a  gang  of  thieves  or  all 
journalists  as  cynical  liars  deHberately  poisoning  the 
wells  of  public  opinion. 

There  are  certainly  business  men  and  journalists 
upon  whom  the  respective  caps  would  fit,  but  taken 
as  a  whole  they  are  neither  less  honourable  nor 
worthy  of  esteem  than  any  other  class  of  men.  Many 
of  them  see  and  admit  the  evils  of  the  system,  and 
consider  themselves,  with  some  justice,  more  injured 
by  it  than  anybody  else.  But  few  men  can  afford  to 
emulate  the  conduct  of  the  mad  knight,  and  tilt  at  the 
windmills  of  a  crazy  society. 

It  is  a  natural  instinct,  when  we  disapprove  of  some- 
thing intangible,  to  vent  our  wrath  on  somebody  con- 
crete, as  modern  research  has  shown  the  custom  of 
unloading  the  sins  of  the  community  on  some  unfor- 
tunate animal  to  have  been  widespread  among  primi- 
tive peoples.  We  therefore  talk  of  greedy  capitalists 
and  mean-spirited  ink-shngers  just  as  we  once  con- 


60  FACING  REALITY 

sidered  every  wretched  Prussian  and  Bavarian  con- 
script as  being  somehow  responsible  for  the  murder 
of  Miss  Cavell  and  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania. 

But  where  competition  sets  the  pace,  the  ordinary 
individual  is  powerless  to  stand  aside.  Consider  the 
journalist  struggling  for  his  living  in  an  overcrowded 
and  by  no  means  too  well  paid  profession.  It  is  not 
as  if  the  editor  or  proprietor  were  to  approach  him 
with  dazzling  bribes  which  he  could  refuse  with  a 
proud  gesture  in  the  cause  of  the  truth  and  his  own 
soul.  He  is  lucky  indeed  if  all  his  energy  and  ser- 
viceableness  to  editors  can  find  him  a  job  at  all,  still 
more  lucky  if  he  can  keep  it  when  advancing  years 
make  it  hard  for  him  to  compete  with  younger  and 
more  resourceful  rivals. 

Ask  any  editor  or  publisher  how  many  papers  he 
has  seen  fail  or  firms  go  bankrupt.  They  themselves 
are  not  arbitrary  Olympians,  lying  beside  their  nectar 
and  ruling  the  world  of  letters  at  their  caprice,  but 
men  with  homes  to  keep  together  and  a  standard  of 
comfort  to  maintain,  striving  to  keep  their  heads  above 
the  torrent  which  has  drowned  so  many  of  their 
fellows. 

In  the  limited  world  which  is  the  sole  reality  for 
most  of  those  who  are  making  their  living  under 
modem  conditions,  the  struggle  for  survival  is  at  work 
in  its  most  brutal  form.  By  advertising  a  quack 
remedy  some  father  may  be  enabling  his  sons  to  get 
the  public-school  substitute  for  education,  and  a  smart 
piece  of  literary  prostitution  on  the  part  of  a  husband 
will  enable  him  to  send  his  sick  wife  to  the  seaside. 


POISONING  THE  WELLS  61 

There  are  few  men  who  will  so  far  sacrifice  their 
self-respect  as  to  admit  that  their  compliance  with 
these  and  similar  necessities  is  incapable  of  defence. 
The  pill-vendor  is  probably  persuaded  that  his  pill 
does  some  good  and  would  do  none  at  all  if  it  were  not 
cried  up  as  loudly  as  other  by  no  means  superior  prep- 
arations— all  that  is  part  of  the  game.  The  man  who 
writes  some  trashy  article  or  insincere  review  reflects 
that  the  public  is  getting  the  only  sort  of  thing  it  is 
capable  of  appreciating,  and  that  this  is  better  than  no 
mental  pabulum  at  all. 

It  is  less  the  love  than  the  need  of  money  that  is  at 
the  root  of  most  modem  evil.  But  our  disinclination 
to  lay  the  blame  on  individuals  need  not  blind  us  to 
the  dangers  of  a  money-ridden  and  anarchic  civilisa- 
tion. For  if  the  most  important  thing  in  life  is  to  get 
right  with  reality,  anything  that  forces  us  to  live  in 
a  world  of  lies  and  pretence  must  be  a  peril  of  the 
direst  magnitude.  Most  of  our  knowledge  of  reality 
is  derived  not  from  what  we  see  but  from  the  written 
experience  of  others,  and  if  these  others  are  interested 
in  making  us  see  and  feel,  by  proxy,  the  thing  that 
is  not,  our  condition  is  no  better  than  that  of  the  blind. 

We  lose  our  capacity  of  distinguishing  between 
what  is  reality  and  what  is  not,  and  we  move  about  in 
a  dream  world,  though  it  is  a  doubtful  question 
whether,  like  Alice  through  the  Looking  Glass,  we 
are  in  our  own  or  somebody  else's  dream. 

The  supreme  question  of  modern  times  is  whether 
the  new  power  that  mankind  has  acquired  over  matter 
is  going  to  provide  it  with  the  means  of  progress  or 


62  FACING  REALITY 

suicide.  We  have  already  dwelt  upon  the  crude  hut 
imminent  dangers  of  war  and  revolution,  dangers  that 
can  only  be  avoided  by  the  opening  of  our  eyes  to  the 
new  order  of  reality  and  the  adaptation  of  our  indi- 
vidual and  collective  lives  to  its  requirements.  But 
the  very  recklessness  with  which  our  fathers  allowed 
the  new  situation  to  take  charge  of  itself  is  an  evil  that 
tends  to  its  own  perpetuation. 

The  further  we  wander  into  the  morass,  the  thicker 
grow  the  mists  around  us  and  more  deceptive  gleam 
the  false  lights  to  prevent  us  from  ever  getting  back 
to  the  true  path  again.  Whether  civilisation  can  be 
saved  depends  upon  our  reah'sing  in  time  what  the 
danger  is,  and  the  first  thing  to  do  is  regain  our 
capacity  for  seeing  the  truth  and  to  find  some  means 
of  countering  the  vested  interests  of  ,our  present 
anarchy  in  blinding  us  to  reality. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  REIGN  OF  TRIYIALITY 

WE  are  accustomed,  and  not  altogether  with- 
out reason,  to  make  light  of  the  pretensions  of 
our  Victorian  grandfathers.  We  have  seen  how  trag- 
ically these  self-satisfied  people  missed  the  opportu- 
nity presented  to  them  of  bringing  life  into  line  with 
the  wholly  new  order  of  reality  created  by  the  advent 
of  machinery. 

There  was  enough  humbug  in  all  conscience  behind 
its  solemnity,  but  in  fairness  we  must  admit  that  at 
least  in  one  important  respect  the  age  possessed  an 
advantage  over  the  one  that  succeeded  it.  Its  solem- 
nity was  frequently  the  cloak  for  a  real,  if  narrow 
and  misdirected,  earnestness  and  concentration. 

The  Victorians  were  the  most  unremitting  of 
workers,  they  took  life  with  an  admirable  if  ponder- 
ous seriousness.  And  they  did,  with  all  their  deficien- 
cies of  delicacy  and  humour,  produce  work  of  an 
enduring  quality  that  seems  quite  beyond  the  scope 
of  our  own  daily  discovered  and  press-shaking 
geniuses. 

That    mid- Victorian     age    was    the    time    when 

Dickens,  Tennyson,  Darwin  and  a  score  of  others, 

hardly  their  inferiors,  were  at  their  zenith,  when  those 

two  rival  colossi,  Disraeli  and  Gladstone,  were  be- 

63 


64  FACING  REALITY 

striding  the  world  of  politics,  and  when  the  horizon 
was  bright  with  the  rising  stars  of  Swinburne, 
Meredith  and  Matthew  Arnold. 

It  ^vill  hardly  be  maintained,  by  the  most  optimistic 
defenders  of  our  present  time,  that  in  sustained,  archi- 
tectonic quality  we  can  produce  anything  to  compare 
with  the  products  of  an  age  at  which  it  is  too  easy 
to  laugh.  Compared  with  theirs,  our  ideals  are 
trivial  and  our  work  flimsy.  And  yet  the  seeds  of 
whatever  defects  our  age  may  possess  were  planted 
only  too  surely  in  the  one  that  preceded  it. 

In  proportion  as  life  drifts  away  from  reality  do  its 
own  processes  become  fitful  and  uncertain.  We  can 
easily  find  excuses  for  saving  ourselves  trouble  when 
we  create  a  dream  world  in  the  image  of  our  desires. 
The  reckless  individualism  which  flourished  in  the 
middle  of  the  last  century  had  made  it  in  everybody's 
interest  to  distort  the  facts  of  life  in  his  neighbour's 
eyes,  and  the  process  of  poisoning  the  wells  of  truth 
began  to  manifest  its  inevitable  effects  as  the  nine- 
teenth century  waxed  old. 

The  blight  of  triviality  descended  upon  no  nation  so 
much  as  England,  whose  insular  position  had  ren- 
dered her  immune  from  the  stimulus  of  foreign  dan- 
ger, and  whose  long  start  in  industrial  prosperity  had 
induced  her  to  slacken  her  energy  and  even  to  neglect 
the  vital  necessitj^  for  education. 

Men  and  nations  who  will  not  grow  up  and  face  the 
responsibilities  of  their  position,  naturally  like  to  con- 
tinue playing  like  children  as  long  as  possible,  and  no 
less  noticeable  than  the  decreasing  seriousness  about 


THE  REIGN  OF  TRIVIALITY        65 

work  was  the  deadly  and  increasing  earnestness  about 
play  that  characterised  the  new  age. 

Hitherto  games  had  been  more  or  less  casual  and 
unorganised  amusements,  the  upper  class  preferring 
rather  to  keep  up  the  old  warfare  between  man  and 
beast  in  its  increasingly  degenerate  form  of  sport  than 
to  stimulate  artificially  the  competitive  spirit  between 
man  and  man  except  in  the  prize-fights  which  were 
less  games  than  miniature  tournaments  in  an  age 
when  boxing  was  a  real  art  of  self-defence,  and  even 
so  respectable  a  middle-class  gentleman  as  Mr. 
Snodgrass  might  find  occasion  to  take  off  his  coat  in 
warning  of  a  weighty  though  by  no  means  precipitate 
resolution  that  he  was  going  to  begin. 

Games  in  those  days  were  pastimes,  incredible  as 
such  levity  may  sound  in  these  days  of  test-matches 
and  international  golf,  and  were  played  in  a  spirit  that 
was  seldom  more  than  half  serious,  unless  weighted 
by  heavy  bets. 

Readers  of  "Tom  Brown's  Schooldays"  will  remem- 
ber how — horrible  to  relate — the  bowler  'who  dis- 
missed Jack  Raggles  in«a  school  match  so  far  forgot 
himself  as  playfully  to  toss  the  ball  on  to  the  bats- 
man's retreating  back.  We  can  as  easily  imagine, 
nowadays,  Marshal  Foch  digging  one  of  the  German 
delegates  in  the  ribs  on  his  signing  the  terms  of  the 
armistice. 

The  motto  of  too  many  of  us  nowadays  is  the  in- 
spiring "play  while  you  work  and  work  while  you 
play."  Such  a  trifle  as  the  South  African  war  was 
not  even  allowed  to  ruffle  the  surface  of  the  sporting 


66  FACING  REALITY 

world  and  it  was  not  uncommon  even  for  those  en- 
gaged in  it  to  display  more  interest  in  sporting  than 
in  military  vicissitudes. 

When  the  most  popular  poet  of  the  day  permitted 
himself  to  say  in  his  wrath  things  that  certainly  erred 
in  being  rude  and  intemperate  about  the  devotees  of 
games,  he  was  greeted  with  a  chorus  of  horrified  pro- 
test, not  because  he  had  been  rude  and  intemperate, 
for  that  had  never  before  had  an  adverse  effect  upon 
his  popularity,  but  because  he  had  refused  to  bow 
down  before  the  flannelled  and  muddied  fetish  that 
all  classes  of  his  countrymen  had  united  in  setting  up. 

Even  if  the  old  cock-and-bull  story  about  Welling- 
ton and  the  playing  fields  of  Eton  has  been  long  ago 
exploded,  everybody  is  aware  of  the  many  things  that 
can  be  said,  and  most  of  them  with  some  measure  of 
truth,  in  'favour  of  playing  games — that  it  is  a 
healthy  relaxation  from  work,  that  it  is  a  school  of 
manly  virtues,  that  it  inculcates  courage,  self-sacrifice 
and  self-control,  that  it  improves  the  physique  of  the 
nation  and  that  all  work  and  no  play  makes  Jack  a 
dull  boy. 

These  arguments,  we  repeat,  are  not  without  a 
measure  ,of  truth,  and  nobody  but  a  curmudgeon 
would  want  to  deprive  himself  or  anybody  else  of  an 
occasional  day's  enjoyment  on  the  cricket  field  or  the 
hnks.  But  on  examination  it  will  be  found  that  they 
have  only  a  strictly  limited  application,  and  by  no 
means  hold  good  for  the  whole  or  even  the  greater 
part  of  the  field  which  is  covered  by  the  games  spirit 
nowadays. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TRIVIALITY         67 

We  wonder,  for  instance,  whether  the  Oval  would 
be  considered  as  a  particularly  promising  forcing 
ground  of  the  manly  virtues,  when  the  captains  of  the 
opposing  teams  in  a  Test  Match  have  to  inspect  the 
wickets  under  police  protection,  and  when  a  crowd 
assembles  outside  the  Australians'  dressing  room 
threatening  in  indescribable  language  to  drag  them 
out. 

Any  one  who  knows  the  atmosphere  of  a  modern 
race-course  must  sometimes  wonder  whether  the 
human  spirit  is  being  trained  for  the  battlefield  or  the 
gaol.  We  would  ask  whether  the  average  golfer  or 
tennis  player  is  appreciably  more  unselfish  and  better 
tempered  than  other  men,  and  somehow  one  fails  to 
visualise  a  company  of  jolly  golfers  assembled  round 
a  bowl  of  punch  at  the  end  of  a  hard  day's  driving 
and  putting. 

Cricket  may  be  a  healthy  relaxation  of  the  mind, 
but  how  about  the  bridge  of  dread  that  spans  house 
parties  up  to  three  in  the  morning?  There  is  an  all- 
important  distinction  between  a  relaxation  from  work 
and  a  substitute  for  it,  and  the  saw  about  all  work  and 
no  play  needs  to  be  taken  in  conjunction  with  its  ear- 
rasping  sequel  that  all  play  and  no  work  gives  Jack 
a  ragged  shirt. 

To  play  games  occasionally  and  in  the  right  spirit 
is  beyond  question  a  joyous  and  healthy  thing,  but 
to  treat  them  as  ends  in  themselves  and  to  permit  them 
to  compete  with  the  serious  interests  of  life  is  an  act 
of  degenerate  frivolity  that  bodes  ill  for  the  nation 
wherein  it  has  become  habitual.     It  evinces  distaste 


6S  FACING  REALITY 

for  reality  in  its  most  extreme  form.  A  wholly 
artificial  set  of  interests  must  be  created,  the  things 
about  which  we  get  anxious  or  excited  must  be  things 
of  no  moment  to  anybody  except  those  who  make  a 
living  out  of  them. 

I  remember  many  years  ago  now,  buying  an 
evening  paper  at  the  crossing  of  Baker  Street  and 
Marylebone  Road,  in  order  to  obtain  the  first  definite 
news  of  the  great  naval  battle  which  was  known  to 
have  been  fought  in  the  Sea  of  Japan.  I  had  scarcely 
started  reading  it  when  I  was  accosted  by  a  decently 
dressed  person  in  a  bowler  who  asked  me,  in  agitated 
tones,  whether  I  could  kindly  inform  him  who  had 
won. 

I  started  to  read  him  the  brief  words  of  the  official 
dispatch,  to  the  effect  that  a  decisive  victory  had  been 
won,  a  fleet,  whose  proceedings  had  for  months  held 
the  world  in  suspense,  destroyed,  and  thousands  of 
men  sent  to  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  But  my  ques- 
tioner's face  took  on  a  puzzled  expression,  and  then 
the  vague  resentment  of  a  man  who  feels  that  he  is 
somehow  being  made  a  fool  of. 

"I  didn't  mean  anything  about  all  that,"  he  said, 
"I  was  asking  about  the  race." 

Luckily  I  was  able  to  satisfy  him  by  referring  him 
to  the  stop-press  column,  which  informed  an  expec- 
tant nation  that  Cicero  had  won  the  Derby.  My  ques- 
tioner had  been  plainly  unable  to  conceive  that  a  sane 
man  could  imagine  one  of  his  fellow  countrymen  to 
regard  the  Derby  as  an  event  of  lesser  importance 


THE  REIGN  OF  TRIVIALITY         69 

than  a  battle  which  might  prove  to  be  the  turning 
point  in  the  relations  of  East  and  West. 

Our  examination,  in  the  last  chapter,  of  the  com- 
petitive spirit  so  powerfully  stimulated  by  the  anarchy 
of  our  response  to  the  industrial  revolution,  will  enable 
us  to  appreciate  the  significance  of  this  last  diseased 
growth  of  it  upon  the  social  organism. 

If  the  Victorians  so  little  understood  the  heritage 
of  mechanical  power  into  which  they  had  come  as  to 
waste  it  recklessly  and  employ  it  for  purposes  of  mu- 
tual injury,  they  had  at  least  enough  sense  of  reality 
to  compete  with  each  other  about  things  that  really 
mattered. 

It  was  thus  that,  in  spite  of  the  heritage  of  evil 
which  they  had  received  and  to  which  they  were  con- 
stantly adding  to  pass  on  to  their  children,  they  were 
enabled  to  accomplish  so  great  a  quantity  of  solid  and 
enduring  work.  But  as  time  went  on,  competition 
itself  suffered  a  partial  divorce  from  reality  and  men 
began  to  fight  for  goals  instead  of  territories  and  get 
the  better  of  each  other  in  their  scores  as  keenly  as 
in  their  bank  accounts. 

This  may  suggest  one  counterbalancing  advantage 
that  may  certainly  be  claimed  for  the  worship  of 
games  and  the  cult  of  trivial  things  in  general.  Where 
competition  is  doing  actual  harm,  the  artificial  kind  is 
at  least  a  less  powerful  engine  of  mischief  than  the 
real.  How  much  better  it  would  be  for  everybody 
concerned,  except  the  profiteers  and  the  generals,  if 
the  quarrels  of  nations  could  be  fought  out  with  pea- 
shooters between  armies  of  tin  soldiers! 


70  FACING  REALITY 

It  is  saner  that  England  and  Ireland  should  want 
to  beat  each  other  with  footballs  than  with  bullets. 
And  when  a  suicidal  class  squabble  like  the  coal  strike 
is  at  its  height  it  is  better  that  the  miner  should  vote 
the  Dreadnought  Comnumiser  a  bore,  and  care  more 
about  a  good  report  of  the  Cup  Tie  than  the  doctrines 
of  the  Third  International.  Unreality  may  at  least 
have  its  uses  as  a  safety  valve. 

But  the  merely  negative  advantage  that  sheer  fu- 
tility may  possess  over  positive  mischief  is  a  poor 
enough  defence  for  it  as  a  national  cult.  At  best  it 
may  postpone  the  evil  day.  For  the  deadliness  of 
futility  lies  in  the  confusion  that  it  makes  of  all  values. 
It  is  bad  enough  not  to  see  the  thing  that  is  real,  but 
it  is  worse  not  to  want  to  see  it.  To  be  frivolous  as 
a  relaxation  may  often  mask  an  enlightened  serious- 
ness of  purpose,  but  this  is  not  the  spirit  with  which 
we  are  at  present  concerned. 

Listen  to  the  conversation  that  has  to  take  place  at 
any  average  party  between  those  who  cannot  for  the 
moment  be  jammed  into  some  contest,  whether  of 
tennis,  bridge,  putting,  croquet  or  snooker,  according 
to  time  and  opportunity.  It  will,  in  the  intervals 
between  the  discussion  of  the  weather  and  of  these  or 
other  games,  drift  off  to  matters  which  are  disposed  of 
with  a  levity  and  matter-of-courseness  nothing  short 
of  appalling. 

"It  is  awfully  hot  to-day.'* 

"Yes,  awfully,  isn't  it?    So  dry  for  the  courts." 

"Yes,  isn't  it?    Isn't  it  awful  about  Ireland?" 

"Yes,  awfully,  but  Sir  Dunder  Head  told  my  sister 


THE  REIGN  OF  TRIVIALITY        71 

that  it'll  be  quite  all  right  now  that  we  can  send  a 
proper  army  to  deal  with  them." 

"Oh,  rather,  none  of  them  really  want  to  go  on 
.  .  .  the  priests,  you  know  .  .  .  the  courts  are  play- 
ing quite  true  really." 

"Awfully,  aren't  they?  I  wonder  whether  the 
champion  really  was  ill!" 

"Poor  girl!  one  can't  think  how  awful  it  must  be 
for  her  to  get  beaten  in  a  match  like  that." 

"Yes,  awful,  mustn't  it?  I  always  think  we  ought 
to  make  allowances.  I  say,  are  you  going  to  thfe 
bazaar  for  the  General  Dyer  Tip  fund?" 

"I  don't  know.  I  suppose  one  ought  to  ,  .  .  all 
those  poor  women  and  children.  .  .  .  The  courts  are 
jolly  green  for  the  time  of  year." 

"Yes,  it's  awfully  hot,  isn't  it?" 

"Awfully." 

Or  perhaps  the  talk  may  drift  off  to  the  unemployed 
who  are  of  course  only  walking  the  streets  because 
they  are  too  lazy  to  work,  and  those  horrid  doles, 
which  are  causing  such  a  lot  of  mischief,  and  the  paid 
Bolshevik  agitators  who  are  at  the  bottom  of  every- 
thing and,  "do  you  know,  my  dear,  that  two  of  poor 
Colonel  Backsight's  labourers  have  joined  one  of 
those  horrid  unions,  when  you  know  how  no  one  can 
afford.  .  .  ." 

But  perhaps  we  are  giving  the  impression  that  the 
reign  of  triviality  is  confined  to  one  class  only  and  the 
reader  is  anticipating,  with  more  or  less  pleasurable 
feelings,  the  dissection  of  the  sins  and  secret  horrors 
of  "smart  society"  according  to  the  time-honoured 


72  FACING  REALITY 

programme.  Tliis  is  always  a  popular  move,  because 
most  people,  in  default  of  experience,  like  to  have 
their  imagination  tickled  with  the  glamour  and  dalH- 
ance  of  the  Prophet's  Paradise  that  they  imagine  to 
exist  somewhere  within  the  confines  of  Mayfair  and 
Belgravia. 

We  have  even  read,  in  one  of  our  most  reliable 
organs  of  daily  enlightenment,  an  account  of  a  splen- 
did mansion  at  which  the  members  of  this  society  meet 
for  the  promiscuous  gratification  of  their  refined  but 
lascivious  instincts,  and  of  the  not  unnatural  embar- 
rassment of  a  young  gentleman  on  finding  that  his 
partner  for  the  evening  happened  to  be  his  hostess 
of  the  previous  day,  one  of  the  best  known  and  popu- 
lar hostesses,  so  we  were  credibly  informed,  in  all 
London. 

One  wonders  from  what  lady  with  a  duster  or  gen- 
tleman with  a  salver  the  purveyors  of  such  information 
about  society  derive  their  authority. 

The  worst  of  such  attacks  is  that  so  far  from  open- 
ing people's  eyes,  they  have  no  relation  to  anything 
that  exists,  and  therefore  allow  the  real  case  against 
what  they  call  society  to  go  by  default.  For,  in  the 
sense  in  which  it  was  used  in  the  fifties  and  sixties,  and 
is  still  used  to-day  hj  people  who  would  be  ready  to 
raise  their  Nunc  Dimittis  once  to  have  lunched  with 
a  mayor  who  has  been  knighted  for  his  public  spirit 
in  receiving  royalty  at  a  cattle  show,  society  has 
ceased  to  exist. 

There  is  no  longer  a  compact  and  exclusive  body  of 
people,  maintaining  a  certain  standard  of  manners 


THE  REIGN  OF  TRIVIALITY        73 

and  culture  and  all  more  or  less  acquainted  with  each 
other.  The  flood  of  newly-acquired  wealth  has  long 
ago  broken  down  the  barriers  of  birth  and  breeding, 
every  one  who  has  money  to  spend  may  count  upon  a 
sufficiency  of  friends  of  the  most  unexceptionable 
quality  and  upon  purchasing  an  attractive  looking  girl 
of  the  best  antecedents  to  share  his  name  and  bed- 
room. 

People  form  their  own  sets,  according  to  their 
needs,  assets  and  inclinations,  and  most  of  them  who 
have  daughters  to  dispose  of  go  through  a  certain 
customary  and  monotonous  routine,  little  differing  in 
principle  from  that  of  the  Arab  bazaar,  where  the 
raw  material  for  the  seraglio  is  exhibited  with  some- 
what greater  frankness  of  intention. 

The  real  case  against  the  disconnected  groups  that 
are  lumped  together  under  the  heading  of  society  is 
not  that  their  members  bask  in  an  atmosphere  of 
splendid  vice,  for  their  lives  are  quite  frequently 
marked  by  the  dullest  respectability  and  a  piety  of 
the  most  old-fashioned,  not  to  say  bigoted  type.  It  is 
that  their  way  of  hfe  is  nearly  as  objectless  and,  to 
use  the  slang  expression  that  exactly  hits  it  off, 
"footling,"  as  that  of  the  worthy  people  in  villas  who 
think  that  the  whole  duty  of  man  is  humbly  to  per- 
severe in  the  imitation  of  those  ladies,  whose  smiles 
and  shoulders  are  so  alluringly  exposed  for  their  edi- 
fication on  the  front  page  of  the  Maunderer. 

Even  where,  for  want  of  a  more  intelligent  ideal, 
rich  people  consciously  aim  at  being  thought  fast,  it 
is  probable  that  few  of  them  have  the  courage  of  their 


74  FACING  REALITY 

incontinence  and  that,  in  all  but  a  few  exceptional 
cases,  immorality  is  kept  within  the  bounds  prescribed 
by  custom  and  the  marriage  rite. 

But  to  talk  of  "footling"  as  if  it  were  the  monopoly 
of  Mayf air  is  to  display  that  very  capacity  of  taking 
dreams  for  realities  which  is  the  worst  feature  of  our 
time.  It  is  assmned  that  because  the  manual  labourer 
and  artisan,  to  whom  is  strangely  appropriated  the 
exclusive  title  of  "working  man,"  is  nearer  to  the 
physical  necessities  of  life,  he  has  therefore  a  greater 
sense  of  reality  than  that  possessed  by  other  classes. 

Those  whose  experience  it  was  to  serve  in  the  ranks 
during  the  Great  War  must  have  suffered,  if  they 
were  capable  of  it,  a  startling  disillusionment  in  this 
respect.  There  is  perhaps  no  place  where  the  conver- 
sation is  so  entirely  futile  as  a  barrack-room,  unless 
it  be,  perhaps,  a  servants'  hall.  It  was  the  exception, 
rather  than  the  rule,  to  find  a  private  with  the  vaguest 
interest  in  or  knowledge  of  what  he  was,  with  a  mar- 
vellous cheerfulness  and  stoicism,  prepared  to  give  his 
life  in  maintaining. 

The  great  topic  of  conversation  was  nearly  always 
that  of  food,  a  joke  about  "rissoles"  would  be  sure  to 
ripple  down  a  platoon  on  the  march  quite  irrespective 
of  merit.  The  performances  of  Chelsea  and  Totten- 
ham Hotspur  were  discussed  with  more  knowledge 
and  interest  than  those  of  the  Tsar's  armies  or  a  be- 
sieged British  garrison  in  Mesopotamia. 

It  is  perhaps  the  lack  of  imagination  displayed  by 
the  British  Tommy  which  accounts  for  his  proverbial 
incapability  of  knowing  when  he  is  beaten.    He  will, 


THE  REIGN  OF  TRIVIALITY        75 

when  holding  an  isolated  trench  in  nearly  hopeless 
circumstances,  go  on  calmly  taking  an  occasional  shot, 
and  joking  to  his  surviving  comrades  about  matters 
of  the  greatest  indifference. 

The  disaster  on  the  Aisne  of  1917  drove  even  the 
poilus  to  sporadic  mutiny,  every  nation  that  took  a 
prolonged  part  in  the  war  found  its  moral  going  at 
one  time  or  another,  with  the  solitary  exception  of 
the  British.  The  utmost  disaster  and  a  stupidity  that 
merged  on  the  criminal  in  the  way  he  was  driven  to 
the  shambles  could  not  affect  the  spirits  of  Tommy 
or,  for  that  matter,  of  Tommy's  officer.  The  soldier 
might  know,  and  certainly  ima'gined  that  he  knew  that 
some  one  had  blundered,  but  the  offender  was  more 
probably  his  platoon  sergeant  than  the  commander- 
in-chief,  and  for  blundering  the  sufficient  remedy  was 
a  grouse. 

Never  during  the  whole  war,  not  when  Von  Kluck 
was  thundering  on  his  tracks  from  Mons  to  the  Marne, 
did  he  grouse  to  such  an  extent  as  when,  on  the  con- 
clusion of  the  armistice,  he  made  his  triumphant 
march  to  the  Rhine,  because  on  that  occasion  he  out- 
marched his  supplies  and  the  actual  loss  of  his  food 
was  a  reality  that  touched  him  nearer  than  the  prob- 
able blundering  away  of  the  war. 

This  would  be  a  state  of  mind  not  only  heroic  but 
entirely  sufficient  if  the  object  of  life  were  merely  to 
stick  out  a  wearisome  and  dangerous  job  that  some 
one  has  told  you  to  do.  The  so-called  working  man 
has  no  doubt  a  shrewd  enough  sense  of  such  realities 
as  immediately  concern  him,  and  within  his  own  lim- 


76  FACING  REALITY 

ited  purview  no  amount  of  humbug  and  fine  speaking 
will  turn  him  away  from  the  facts.  But  outside  that 
all  too  narrow  circle,  he  neither  can  nor  will  see. 

He  knows  well  enough  whether  the  boss  or  foreman 
with  whom  he  is  in  immediate  contact  is  treating  him 
fairly  or  not,  but  get  him  into  some  national  dispute 
and  he  will  back  what  happens  to  be  his  side  with  as 
unreasoning  an  obstinacy  as  he  supports  his  county 
at  cricket  or  his  country  against  the  Jerrys. 

He  will  vote  the  discussion  of  the  subject  a  bore, 
and  yet  if  his  distracted  leaders,  seeing  the  case  hope- 
less and  starvation  ahead,  trust  to  his  balloting  them 
out  of  the  difficulty,  they  are  wofully  mistaken. 
Cursing  them  and  the  employers  and  the  strike  gener- 
ally he  will,  if  he  condescends  to  use  his  ballot  paper 
at  all,  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  put  his  cross  for 
no  surrender,  and  trudge  back  to  his  foodless  cottage 
satisfied  that  at  any  rate  he  has  done  the  right  thing 
for  his  side. 

If  you  want  to  know  exactly  what  reality  means  to 
the  workman,  you  have  only  to  read  one  of  the  enor- 
mous and  dirt-cheap  publications  which  those  who 
cater  for  his  tastes  and  help  to  form  them  turn  out 
weekly  by  the  million,  and  from  which  he  derives  his 
knowedge  of  the  world. 

There  will  be  a  scanty,  but  usually  garbled  and  in- 
accurate gleaning  of  the  foreign  and  Parliamentary 
intelligence,  and  perhaps  one  leader  written  obviously 
from  the  point  of  view  of  a  man  of  limited  education 
addressing  others  of  none,  and  consisting  of  a  few 
villainously  worded  platitudes.    All  this  will  take  up 


THE  REIGN  OF  TRIVIALITY        77 

considerably  less  space  than  the  sporting  intelligence, 
which  is  rendered  in  a  wonderful  and  complex  jargon 
obviously  intended  to  give  the  impression  that  the 
authors  both  have  seen  and  understand  the  events 
they  are  turned  on  to  write  up  in  the  office. 

Perhaps  the  piece  de  resistance  will  be  the  auto- 
biography of  a  crack  cricketer  or  a  cracksman  of  a 
different  kind,  even  of  a  real  murderer.  And  you 
wonder  how  honest  Trump  Yorker  and  Bill  Sikes 
have  suddenly  blossomed  out  into  a  style  as  facile  and 
flowery,  and  indeed  exactly  similar  to  that  of  the 
trained  gentlemen  who  provide  the  rest  of  the  intel- 
lectual banquet. 

The  remainder  of  the  paper  is  devoted  to  the  most 
fetid  and  prurient  sensations  that  can  be  worked  up 
from  an  inaccurate  research  into  the  details  of  human 
vice  and  suffering. 

If  we  aspire  to  anything  higher  than  the  rewards 
of  a  demagogue  servility,  we  had  better  clear  our 
minds  of  the  cant  that  a  lower  class  consisting  mainly 
of  board-school  educated  town-dwellers  is  distin- 
guished from  others  by  its  greater  sense  of  reality  or 
desire  to  acquire  it.  Any  one  who  thinks  so  has  only 
to  listen  to  what  they  say  or  to  study  what  they  read. 

There  is  no  greater  victim  of  shoddy  and  commercial 
humbug  than  the  workman  and  his  family.  It  is  at 
them  that  the  vendor  of  patent  medicines  directs  his 
most  obvious  wiles,  it  is  in  them  that  the  tipster  and 
the  three-card  trickster  find  their  victims,  it  is  they 
who  will  go  into  raptures  about  the  most  impudent 
travesties  of  life  on  the  cinema.     We  refer  to  the 


78  FACING  REALITY 

majority;  for  the  exceptions,  on  whom  the  hope  of  the 
future  so  largely  depends,  are  not  yet  sufficiently 
numerous  to  leaven  the  whole  lump. 

But  if  both  the  upper  and  lower  ranks  of  society 
have  alike  fallen  mider  the  blight  of  triviality,  what 
of  that  large  and  ill-defined  class  that  stands  between 
the  two? 

Of  its  lower  ranks,  the  tradesmen,  the  clerks,  those 
who  occupy  various  minor  positions  in  the  commer- 
cial or  business  world,  it  is  unnecessary  to  treat  except 
in  so  far  as  to  say  that  what  was  postulated  of  the 
workman  applies  to  them  with  such  modification  as 
may  be  due  to  a  slightly  greater  smattering  of  educa- 
tion, a  pathetic  yearning  for  cheap  culture  and  a  sense 
of  incomplete  gentility  which  hinders  every  effort  to 
unite  in  their  own  interests.  They  are  mostly  too  busy 
struggling  for  survival  in  the  competitive  arena  to 
have  any  time  to  spare  for  looking  about  them. 

But  when  we  speak  of  a  middle  class  we  are  most 
inclined  to  visualise  that  large  community  of  the 
black-coated  that  has  grown  up  in  recent  times  in  the 
suburbs  of  the  great  towns  and  provides  the  typical 
man  and  woman  whose  tastes  and  personality  are  all 
in  all  to  the  majority  of  the  daily  as  distinguished  from 
the  weekly  newspapers,  and  whose  demand  all  but  the 
cheapest  and  crudest  forms  of  art  and  literature  are 
intended  to  supply. 

The  upper  and  labouring  classes  we  had  with  us 
before  ever  the  coming  of  the  machines  revolutionised 
modern  life.  But  the  suburban  class,  such  as  we 
know  it  to-day,  is  almost  entirely  the  product  of  that 


THE  REIGN  OF  TRIVIALITY        79 

revolution  and  the  competitive  anarchy  which  suc- 
ceeded it.  There  was  certainly  a  middle  class  long 
before  the  machines,  but  one  altogether  different  in 
character  and  traditions  and  filling  a  less  important 
place  in  the  social  order. 

Even  the  middle  class  that  Dickens  interpreted 
with  such  wonderful  sympathy  is  as  extinct  as  the 
monasteries  in  England.  Those  formidable  old 
coves,  with  tempers  of  pepper  and  hearts  of  gold,  with 
whose  lineaments  we  are  so  familiar  in  the  drawings 
of  Leech  and  Cruikshank  have  no  counterparts  in  the 
villas  and  offices  of  our  own  day. 

What  distinguishes  these  Dickens'  heroes  is  their 
large  absence  of  snobbery,  Mr.  Brownlow  and  even 
Scrooge  would  never  have  considered  it  the  height 
of  bliss  to  have  been  admitted  to  the  mansion  of  Sir 
Leicester  Dedlock.  We  have  some  inkling  of  the 
change  in  ideals  that  was  perceptible  towards  the  end 
of  Dickens'  career  in  the  picture  of  the  Veneering 
household,  and  the  creation  of  du  Maurier's  Mrs.  Pon- 
sonby  de  Tomkyns  in  the  'eighties  may  be  said  to 
mark  a  turning  point  in  English  history.  The  new 
middle  class  had  come  into  its  own. 

It  was  a  class  distinguished  from  all  others  by  its 
entire  absence  of  pride  and  traditions.  It  is  not 
without  significance  that  the  chief  difficulty  in  form- 
ing a  middle-class  union  is  the  unwillingness  of  any 
one  to  admit  that  he  or  she  belongs  to  the  middle 
class. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  most  jerry-built  villas  are  all 
ladies  and  gentlemen  of  an  unexceptionable  brand. 


80  FACING  REALITY 

The  intonations  of  their  vowels,  their  habits  of  social 
intercourse,  are  ruled  by  an  adoring  imitation  of  the 
mysterious  and  largely  non-existent  entity  they  know 
as  society. 

The  periodical  denunciations  of  smart  sins  written 
by  earnest  clerks  for  their  edification  not  only  are  sure 
of  a  profitable  circulation  in  villadom,  but  have  even 
been  rumoured  to  have  produced  an  appreciable  in- 
crease of  minor  viciousness  among  the  wives  and 
daughters  of  our  city  men. 

It  is,  in  fact,  among  the  women  of  this  class  that 
its  most  characteristic  features  are  developed.  The 
men  are  after  all  held  too  rigorously  to  their  daily 
avocations  in  the  competitive  mill  to  make  their  per- 
sonalities much  felt.  And  a  life  even  of  wasteful  and 
misdirected  toil  is  a  more  natural  and  healthy  thing 
than  a  round  of  monotonous  idleness  and  pretence, 
such  as  falls  to  the  lot  of  the  strenuously  ladylike 
ladies  who  give  what  orders  they  dare  to  the  mere 
women  who  perform  the  grudging  and  inefiicient  serv- 
ice of  cleaning  their  homes  and  calling  them  "mum." 

It  is  among  these  that  triviality  attains  its  most 
extravagant  development.  Indeed,  it  is  not  easy  to 
conceive  how  any  contact  with  reality  is  possible  in 
a  life  so  monotonously  artificial.  Bad  as  any  sham 
may  be,  the  imitation  of  a  sham  must  be  accounted 
worse. 

These  rows  of  badly  built  yet  pretentious  dwellings 
with  the  tyranny  of  snobbish  convention  that  per- 
vades them  give  their  inhabitants  the  choice  of  sub- 
mitting themselves  body  and  soul  to  what  must  be,  to 


THE  REIGN  OF  TRIVIALITY         81 

any  one  possessed  of  the  least  independence  of  mind, 
boredom  unimaginable.  Most  of  them  submit,  but 
at  the  price  of  all  capacity  for  seeing  things  with  their 
own  eyes.  Some  of  them  are  driven  into  a  revolt 
which  is  equally  extravagant  and  futile. 

Every  sort  of  crazy  and  bizarre  cult  finds,  as  long 
as  it  is  new,  its  most  zealous  devotees  among  the 
women  of  the  suburbs.  Sometimes  they  will  pose  as 
the  allies  of  a  lower  class  that  despises  them  at  heart ; 
sometimes  they  will  sport  an  aura  and  take  on  half- 
a-dozen  romantic  but  rather  naughty  previous  exis- 
tences; sometimes  their  energies  have  found  a  more 
strenuous  outlet  in  discharging  stones  at  windows  and 
saliva  at  statesmen.  But  this  reaction  from  vanity  is 
also  vanity,  it  has  no  relation  to  any  reality  except  the 
desire  to  escape  from  an  existence  rightly  intolerable 
to  an  intelligent  being. 

It  was  for  members  of  this  class  that  the  vilest  of 
all  attempts  to  escape  from  the  realities  of  war  was 
provided  in  the  press ;  the  motto  of  snobbery  and  pet- 
tiness as  usual  was  almost  openly  adopted  in  more 
than  one  illustrated  periodical  whose  success  caused 
abundant  imitation. 

At  a  time  when  the  services  of  every  man  and 
woman  were  urgently  needed  in  the  fight  for  freedom 
it  is  almost  incredible  that  war-work  for  women  could 
be  openly  scoffed  at  as  only  fit  for  dowdies,  and  that 
it  should  be  more  than  hinted  at  that  a  really  smart 
woman  would  find  more  opportunities  for  pleasure 
and  the  gratification  of  her  carnal  affections  than  ever 
before. 


82  FACING  REALITY 

A  picture  of  the  fashionable  and  virtuous  heroine 
sprawling  in  the  embraces  of  a  goatish  general  while 
the  serious  war-workers  toiled  disconsolately  in  the 
next  room  must  have  been  extremely  encouraging  for 
those  whose  sacrifice  for  the  cause  was  often  thankless 
enough  without  the  humiliation  of  feeling  that  they 
were  only  butts  for  their  pains.  Nor  can  the  duties 
of  provost  marshals  have  been  lightened  by  the  stren- 
uous efforts  to  persuade  newly- joined  officers,  who 
were  naturally  anxious  to  be  as  like  the  genuine  article 
as  possible,  that  the  happy  warrior  whom  every  officer 
and  gentleman  should  wish  to  be  was  a  chinless  ass 
addicted  to  the  unlimited  enjoyment  of  "bubbly"  and 
his  friends'  wives. 

These  imaginary  beau-ideals  were  of  'course  as- 
sumed to  be  aristocrats  of  the  bluest  blood,  but  their 
place  of  birth  was  nearer  to  Ealing  than  to  Portman 
Square  and  they  had  most  honour  in  their  own  native 
suburbia. 

We  have  deliberately  put  the  triviality  that  per- 
vades not  only  one  but  all  classes  of  modern  society  in 
as  strong  a  light  as  possible  in  order  to  make  it  clear 
in  what  the  peril  to  our  civilisation  consists.  But  we 
are  well  aware  that  this  is  not  the  whole  case,  for  then 
it  would  be  waste  of  time  to  diagnose  a  disease  that 
there  could  be  no  prospect  of  curing. 

There  are  grounds,  that  it  is  now  time  to  elucidate, 
for  hoping  that  this  state  of  things,  alarming  as  it 
undoubtedly  is,  may  be  transitory,  that  the  worst  has 
already  been  passed  and  that,  with  the  determination 


THE  REIGN  OF  TKIVIALITY        83 

to  understand  and  remedy  the  evil,  it  may  not  only 
be  surmounted,  but  that  mankind  may  for  the  first 
time  enter  upon  the  use  and  enjoyment  of  the  heritage 
that  its  conquest  over  nature  has  prepared  for  it. 


CHAPTER  V 

GROUNDS  OF  HOPE 

EVEN"  when  the  Victorian  age  was  at  its  height 
of  self-satisfaction  there  were  not  wanting 
voices,  and  those  of  the  sweetest  and  most  powerful, 
to  proclaim  that  all  was  not  well,  that  civilisation  was, 
to  use  the  vivid  phrase  of  Carlyle,  shooting  Niagara, 
without  any  sense  or  study  of  its  dangers.  It  is,  in- 
deed, almost  startling  to  contrast  the  robust  optimism 
of  the  average  man  of  that  time  with  the  apprehen- 
sion and  gloom  that  weighed  upon  so  many  of  its  lead- 
ing spirits. 

Even  the  courtliness  and  sentimentality  of  Tenny- 
son is  not  proof  against  it,  the  mind  of  the  dying 
Arthur  is  clouded  by  the  same  doubt  which  is  the  insis- 
tent motif  of  that  most  poignant  of  all  elegies.  In 
Memoriam.  The  robustness  of  Dickens  is  not  proof 
towards  the  end  of  his  life  against  an  increasing  dis- 
satisfaction with  the  shams  and  cruelties  of  the  social 
system. 

The  key  to  the  vicissitudes  of  Newman's  career  is  to 

be  found  in  the  fact  that  his  unrivalled  intellectual 

honesty  had  opened  his  eyes  to  the  reality  of  his  time, 

and  that  his  sensitive  soul  could  not  bear  the  vision. 

He  fled  to  the  Roman  church  as  the  only  complete  and 

logical  refuge  from  reality,  but  even  within  the  fold 

84 


GROUNDS  OF  HOPE  85 

his  restless  spirit  could  not  find  peace,  and  his  ears 
were  troubled  by  the  questionings  which,  with  terrific 
fairness,  he  allowed  the  demons  of  Hell  to  shout  at 
the  passing  soul  of  Gerontius.  The  line  between  the 
extremes  of  faith  and  scepticism  is  oftentimes  as  thin 
as  a  hair. 

In  the  later  Victorians  the  note  of  revolt  against 
their  age  becomes  completely  self-conscious.  The 
pre-Raphaelite  gi'oup  were  either  in  flight  from  its 
ugliness  or  in  open  attack  upon  its  social  system,  and 
in  Swinburne's  earlier  poems  it  is  difficult  to  say 
whether  the  thunder  of  rebellion  or  shriek  of  despair 
is  the  predominant  note. 

Matthew  Arnold,  the  sad  apostle  of  a  culture  with- 
out hope  or  goal,  arraigned  the  commercial  system  and 
its  champions  with  deadly  sarcasm.  And  then  came 
those  like  Walter  Pater  and  the  American  Whistler 
who  desired  nothing  better,  in  their  art,  than  to  shake 
off  from  their  feet  the  dust  of  a  reality  against  which 
they  revolted.  Some  who,  like  William  Morris, 
dreamed  of  reform,  did  so  as  if  conscious  that  the  land 
of  their  desire  was  indeed  Nowhere,  and  their  true 
calling  that  of 

"The  idle  singer  of  an  empty  day." 

It  was  something  at  any  rate  for  its  best  spirits  to 
realise  that  all  was  not  well  with  that  age  of  com- 
placency, that  to  struggle  like  brutes  with  the  powers 
of  civilised  men  was  nothing  better  than  drifting  to 
the  Devil.  And  it  is  not  so  far  a  step  from  this  con- 
viction of  sin  to  the  positive  conclusion  that  it  is  not 


86  FACING  REALITY 

only  within  the  power  of  mankind  to  regulate  their 
own  destinies,  but  that  this  is  an  imperative  duty 
which  they  will  neglect  at  their  peril. 

The  strange  mysticism  that  had  counselled  leaving 
as  much  as  possible  alone  in  the  faith  that  universal 
greed  would  make  all  things  work  together  for  the 
good  of  those  who  loved  money  began  to  command  a 
diminished  allegiance  as  the  nineteenth  century  grew 
old.  The  authority  of  the  "classical"  political 
economy  of  which  John  Stuart  Mill,  following  in  the 
footsteps  of  Ricardo,  had  been  the  almost  unques- 
tioned high-priest,  had  suffered  a  severe  blow  when 
Mill  was  honest  enough  publicly  to  admit  himself 
mistaken  in  one  of  the  cardinal  doctrines  of  the 
"science." 

In  the  'seventies  arose  another  economist,  Jevons, 
who  was  bold  enough  to  maintain  that  Ricardo  and 
Mill  were  able  but  misguided  men  who  had  been 
altogether  wrong  in  the  essentials  of  their  teaching. 

These  economic  interchanges  had  their  importance 
as  marking  the  breakdown  of  what,  during  the  middle 
of  the  century,  had  seemed  the  almost  infallible  dog- 
matism of  what  was  known  as  the  Manchester  school 
of  which  Cobden,  Roebuck  and  Bright  had  been 
the  most  admired  representatives  in  the  world  of 
politics,  and  to  which  Gladstone  had  succeeded  in 
giving  practical  expression  in  his  financial  and  social 
policy. 

From  this  time  forth  there  began  to  be  an  increas- 
ing sense  that  mankind  could  not  order  its  affairs 
merely  by  letting  them  slide,  and  that  some  sort  of 


GROUNDS  OF  HOPE  87 

collective  effort  was  necessary  if  actual  disaster  is  to 
be  averted.  What  form  this  effort  should  take  was 
a  matter  of  divergent  opinion.  The  continental  so- 
cialists, who  took  their  lead  from  Karl  Marx,  believed 
that  the  whole  machinery  of  production  should  be  in 
the  hands  of  those  who  actually  worked  it,  and  that 
it  should  be  administered  for  their  benefit. 

The  striking  success  of  Prussia  in  effecting  the 
union  of  Germany  had  enhanced  the  prestige  of  what, 
in  Enghsh  phrase,  can  best  be  described  as  an  extreme 
Toryism,  based  upon  divine  right  and  the  ability  of 
the  government  to  organise  the  whole  nation  in  peace 
as  an  army  is  trained  in  war,  in  order  to  maintain 
and  impose  on  others  its  ideal  of  racial  culture. 

It  was  in  the  'nineties  that  the  Prussian  doctrine 
obtained  a  temporary  vogue  in  England,  in  the  form 
of  an  imperialism  that  regarded  other  races  as  lesser 
breeds  without  the  scope  of  a  law  which  was  only 
Prussian  culture  translated  into  English. 

Crude  and  mischievous  as  such  notions  may  have 
been  in  themselves,  they  were  at  least  attempts  to  do 
something,  even  a  wrong  thing,  in  preference  to  let- 
ting matters  drift. 

Naturally  the  vogue  which  Darwin's  theory  ob- 
tained,, largely  owing  to  a  ridiculous  agitation  among 
clergymen  who  attributed  the  authorship  of  some 
Semitic  legends  to  the  Supreme  Being,  had  induced 
a  good  deal  of  vague  talk  about  natural  selection, 
based  on  the  assumption  that  it  was  the  whole  duty  of 
man  to  be  as  much  hke  a  beast  as  possible.  But  it 
soon  began  to  be  discovered  that  a  biological  theory, 


88  FACING  REALITY 

transplanted  from  its  native  science,  can  be  made  to 
support  any  cause  whatever,  with  appropriate 
manipulation. 

Besides,  though  Darwin  himself  from  being  a  devil 
of  the  pit  had  been  exalted  into  a  fetish  of  orthodoxy, 
there  were  not  wanting  those  who,  like  Samuel  Butler, 
perceived  that  even  as  a  biologist  his  main  thesis  was 
neither  so  original  nor  above  question  as  his  devotees 
made  out.  Poor  Darwin,  the  most  modest  of  men, 
had  been  dragged  from  his  deliberately  chosen 
obscurity  of  a  scientific  worker  to  figure  as  the 
champion  of  causes  in  which  he  was  never  interested, 
and  a  protagonist  in  controversies  which  he 
deplored. 

In  John  Bunyan's  allegory  of  life  the  first  stage 
on  the  way  to  salvation  is  when  the  man  clothed  in 
rags  realises  that  he  has  a  great  burden  on  his  back, 
and  breaks  into  a  lamentable  cry  of  "What  shall  I 
do?" 

The  people  of  the  fin  de  siecle  may  at  least  claim  to 
have  discovered  these  two  things,  first  that  there  was 
a  burden  to  be  removed  and  next  that  there  was  some- 
thing to  be  done.  They  no  longer  believed  that  all 
was  increasingly  for  the  best  in  the  best  of  all  possible 
worlds,  and  that  you  had  only  got  to  give  everybody 
his  head  and  selfishness  would  do  the  rest. 

The  man  in  rags  was  at  least  beginning  to  look 
round  anxiously  for  the  wicket  gate,  and  to  seek  for 
a  guide,  though  this  guide  was  more  likely  to  be  Mr. 
Worldly  Wiseman  or  even  Apollyon  than  Evangehst. 

It  was  becoming  evident  that  unrestrained  greed 


GROUNDS  OF  HOPE  89 

was  not  the  talisman  that  the  worthy  Victorians  had 
imagined  it.  It  was  not  much  good  pointing  to  the 
advantages  of  competition  when  the  competitors  re- 
fused to  compete.  In  America  an  almost  unlimited 
anarchy  of  private  enterprise  had  led  to  industrial 
despotism  in  its  extreme  form  of  trusts.  Even  the 
cartels  of  stage-ridden  Germany,  though  harnessing 
competition  effectually  enough,  were  loose  and  demo- 
cratic by  comparison. 

Signs  of  the  trust  spirit  were  becoming  increasingly 
apparent  in  England.  And  along  with  this  self-stul- 
tification of  the  competitive  ideal,  there  were  ominous 
signs  of  a  world-wide  revolt  against  it  on  the  part  of 
those  who  served  the  machines  for  hire,  and  who  were 
beginning  to  discover  that  whoever  benefited  from 
all  this  accumulation  of  power,  their  own  lot  was  to 
provide,  in  the  most  wasteful  manner  conceivable,  a 
surplus  of  luxury  for  others  and  for  themselves  the 
means,  if  they  were  sufficiently  lucky  to  get  employ- 
ment, of  buying  just  enough  shoddy  to  eke  out  a  toil- 
some and  ignoble  existence. 

The  great  dock  strike  of  1889  was  a  reminder,  which 
only  those  wilfully  blind  could  disregard,  that  Labour 
unrest  was  a  disease  that  would  kill  if  it  could  not  be 
cured,  and  that  the  best  way  to  cure  it  was  not  to 
throw  physic  to  the  dogs  and  pretend  that  nothing  was 
the  matter. 

Even  in  the  Liberal  party  itself,  the  stronghold  of 
Gladstone  and  Cobden,  the  individuahst  orthodoxy 
was  wavering.  The  so-called  Newcastle  programme 
was  a  recognition,  however  imperfect,  that  merely 


90  FACING  REALITY 

negative  measures  would  not  avail  to  get  society  out 
of  the  ruts. 

The  last  decade  of  the  century,  the  "naughty 
'nineties"  as  it  is  sometimes  called,  was  a  period  of 
remarkable,  if  indecisive,  intellectual  activity.  Every- 
body who  thought  at  all  seemed  to  agree  that  some- 
thing ought  to  be  done,  and  no  one  was  certain  what 
that  something  ought  to  be. 

On  the  one  hand  the  new  suburban  class  had  raised 
the  quest  for  triviality  to  fever  pitch.  It  was  a  time 
of  fussy  ornament  in  tasteless  profusion,  of  an  equally 
fussy  overdress  and  a  shallow  routine  of  badinage  of 
which  a  very  little  was  apt  to  prove  more  wearisome 
than  the  heaviest  sententiousness  of  the  'sixties.  But 
even  these  distressing  symptoms  may  have  masked 
some  faint  aspirations  after  beauty  and  originality, 
they  at  any  rate  represented  a  state  of  social  instabil- 
ity out  of  which  good  as  well  as  evil  might  emerge:  A 
restless  and  a  mocking  age  is  not  the  most  favourable 
for  a  complacent  idol- worship. 

It  is  probable  that  when,  if  ever,  an  adequate  esti- 
mate of  these  times  comes  to  be  a  part  of  history,  the 
two  most  significant  British  figures  of  the  'nineties 
will  be  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw. 
Each  of  these,  in  his  own  way,  stands  for  a  genuine 
if  incomplete  effort  to  resume  touch  with  reality. 

Mr.  Kipling  found  his  reality  in  the  new  growth  of 
the  Empire.  He  preferred  to  visualise  stern,  unemo- 
tional men  in  daily  contact  with  the  coarse  facts  of 
life — war,  the  government  of  races  supposed  to  be 
inferior,  and  roughing  it  round  the  world  at  large. 


GROUNDS  OF  HOPE  91 

The  figure  of  the  slouch-hatted  colonial,  out  all  day 
in  the  open  air,  aggressively  bluflP  and  manly,  had  an 
irresistible  attraction  for  men  whose  horizon  was  lim- 
ited by  their  office  walls  and  the  genteel  roofs  and 
chimneys  that  formed  the  skyline  of  their  native 
street.  To  most  of  these  poor  city  pilgrims  the  idea 
of  the  illimitable  veldt  or  the  calling  temj)le  bells  came 
as  a  message  to  prisoners  out  of  a  brave  reality  from 
which  they  were  forever  barred. 

Mr.  Shaw  is  not,  like  Mr.  Kipling,  a  poet,  and  he 
was  more  concerned  in  exposing  the  sordidness  and 
squalor  of  the  world  around  him  than  in  painting 
dream -pictures  of  a  paradise  somewhere  East  of  Suez, 
or  amid  trumpet-orchids  in  the  Pacific.  Of  construc- 
tive faculty  he  is  almost  entirely  deficient,  in  spite  of 
his  part  in  the  middle-class  socialism  without  tears 
that  was  christened  Fabian,  after  an  old  Roman 
burgher  whose  methods  of  war  earned  him  the  name 
of  "The  dawdler." 

When  Mr.  Shaw  aspires  to  build,  his  schemes 
usually  end  either  in  absurdity  or  a  frank  non-possu- 
mus.  He  wrote  a  play  about  the  marriage  problem 
in  which  his  characters  talk  for  three  of  the  longest 
hours  on  record  and  finally  decide  that  not  much  can 
be  done  after  all;  his  only  hope  for  the  future,  to 
judge  by  his  last  book,  is  that  somebody  may  suddenly 
discover,  for  no  reason  whatever  except  that  he  has 
once  read  of  the  possibility  in  a  book,  that  he  is  going 
to  live  for  three-hundred  years  instead  of  three-score 
and  ten. 

Mr.  Shaw's  love  for  impotent  conclusions  is  an 


92  F  ACIN  G  "REALITY 

almost  universal  feature  of  his  plays,  and  his  life 
force,  which  behaves  like  a  person  and  consigns  John 
Tanner  to  the  python-like  embraces  of  Ann,  is  per- 
haps the  most  unconvincing  deus  eoo  machina  ever 
brought  upon  the  stage. 

But  as  a  purely  destructive  critic,  an  iconoclast, 
Mr.  Shaw's  genius,  particularly  in  his  earlier  plays, 
falls  not  far  short  of  his  own  estimate.  He  looked 
upon  the  civilisation  of  his  time,  and  upon  its  moral 
and  conventional  foundations  and,  behold,  it  was 
about  as  bad  as  it  could  be.  The  respectability  of  the 
Victorians  that  survived  even  the  occasional  overthrow 
of  their  religion  was  itself  exposed  as  the  veriest  hum- 
bug. 

There  is  not  a  little  in  common  between  Voltaire  in 
the  eighteenth  century  and  Mr.  Shaw  at  the  end  of 
the  nineteenth.  Neither  was  capable  of  pointing  the 
way  to  a  new  order  of  things,  but  by  applying  the 
corrosive  acid  of  their  irreverence  to  all  the  supports 
of  the  old,  they  at  least  helped  to  clear  the  way  for 
those  who  should  come  after  them. 

As  the  journalist  and  the  intellectual  mountebank 
began  to  prevail  more  and  more  over  the  genius  in 
Mr.  Shaw,  his  abiding  title  to  fame  tended  to  be  for- 
gotten, which  is  that  in  the  minds  of  multitudes,  to 
whom  he  is  little  more  than  a  name,  has  arisen  a  dis- 
position to  tear  aside  the  veils  of  convention  that  men 
have  drawn  between  themselves  and  reality,  to  regard 
not  what  is  supposed  to  be  but  what  is,  and  to  look 
upon  hfe  as  a  power  capable  of  shaping  its  own  des- 
tinies in  accordance  with  an  intelligent  ideal. 


GROUNDS  OF  HOPE  93 

The  sentimental  and  un-English  version  of  Im- 
perialism current  in  the  'nineties  lost  its  glamour  dur- 
ing the  long  anti-climax  of  the  South  African  war. 

The  clerks  and  music-hall  patrons  who  shouted 
Soldiers  of  the  Queen  had  reckoned  upon  having  a 
war  after  their  own  hearts,  a  stern,  spectacular  and 
safe  affair,  with  an  army  corps  rolling  over  the  veldt 
and  the  few  dirty  old  ruffians  who  besprinkled  it,  one 
or  two  dramatically  complete  victories  (and  here  all 
the  clerks  set  their  lips  in  quiet  determination  to  wash 
out  in  blood  Mr.  Gladstone's  defeat  at  Majuba)  by 
generals  fit  to  stand  along  with  other  heroes  of  the 
playing  field  as  imperial  super-men,  historic  regiments 
and  dear,  rough,  child-like  Tommies  not  unlike 
Mulvaney,  Ortheris  and  Learoyd. 

Never  was  there  a  ruder  awakening.  The  generals 
proved,  in  too  many  instances,  merely  muddle-headed 
old  men  who  performed  miracles  of  incompetence  and 
quarrelled  publicly  among  themselves  in  dispatches, 
the  historic  regiments  were  brave,  but  no  match  for 
the  Boers  in  their  own  country,  and  the  Tommies, 
who  soon  got  sick  to  death  of  their  job,  generally  pre- 
ferred laying  down  their  arms  when  in  a  hopeless 
position  to  the  last  cartridge  and  drop  of  blood  affair 
exacted  by  the  music-hall  convention. 

Finally  Mr.  Kipling  himself,  a  greater  genius  than 
either  his  admirers  or  detractors  imagine,  inflicted  the 
most  unkindest  cut  of  all  by  trouncing  the  fathomless 
power  and  iron  pride  of  middle-class  imperialism  in 
lines  of  scorching  contempt. 

We  were  more  fortunate  than  Prussia  in  having 


94  FACING  REALITY 

this  hectoring  spirit  pricked  in  time.  The  dozen 
years  that  intervened  between  the  little  and  the  great 
war  seem,  in  retrospect,  like  an  incredible  dream. 
The  bastard  imperialism  of  the  'nineties  had  followed 
the  respectable  anarchy  of  the  'sixties  to  the  limbo  of 
discredited  ideals.  The  labour  unrest  had  meanwhile 
taken  a  distinct  turn  for  the  worse  owing  to  a  slight 
rise  in  prices  with  which  wages  failed  to  keep  pace. 

Social  reform  was  in  the  air,  and  a  political  faction 
which  pledged  itself  to  a  bold  and  generous  pro- 
gramme was  returned  to  power  in  a  record  majority 
of  comfortably  off  gentlemen.  But  a  series  of  for- 
midable strikes,  though  these  were  adroitly  enough 
circumvented,  warned  those  who  cared  to  listen  that 
to  secure  the  machinery  of  representation  was  not 
enough — the  workmen  were  beginning  to  look  for 
their  salvation  in  another  place  than  the  House  of 
Commons. 

Meanwhile  the  pursuit  of  frivolity  had  attained  a 
pace  that  even  those  engaged  in  it  must  have  felt  was 
too  furious  to  last.  The  death  of  the  good  old  Queen, 
whose  noblest  achievement  it  had  been  to  have  purged 
the  sink  of  the  Georgian  court,  produced  a  violent 
reaction  against  Victorian  respectability  among  those 
whom  the  competitive  lottery  had  provided  with 
money  to  throw  about,  but  who  lacked  the  responsi- 
bilities of  tradition  or  breeding. 

To  some  of  the  foremost  of  these,  doors  that  had 
hitherto  been  obstinately  closed  were  now  flung  open, 
and  this  was  the  signal  for  an  orgy  of  plutocracy  in 
high    places    which,    though    lacking    the    highly 


GROUNDS  OF  HOPE  95 

coloured  wickedness  enviously  attributed  to  it,  was 
not  only  to  the  last  degree  vapid  and  silly,  but  swelled 
the  rising  tide  of  class  bitterness  by  its  insolent  osten- 
tation. 

For,  indeed,  the  doings  of  these  pre-war  days  were 
dreamlike  in  their  very  lack  of  coherence  and  intelligi- 
ble purpose.  Freak  dinners  were  provided  by  rich 
men  who  seemed  at  a  sheer  loss  how  to  get  rid  of 
their  money,  cotillions  were  danced  in  which  favours 
were  distributed  worth  hundreds  of  pounds,  a  ridicu- 
lous travesty  of  a  mediaeval  tournament  was  enacted, 
with  real  aristocrats  as  the  principal  buffoons,  and  it 
was  seriously  proposed  to  follow  this  up  by  turning 
part  of  a  plaster-pleasure-ground  into  a  temporary 
jungle  in  which  the  tame  animals  of  a  menagerie 
would  be  encountered  by  dauntless  millionaire 
shikaris. 

In  a  slightly  lower  stratum,  the  hysterical  extrava- 
gances of  the  suffragettes  were  allowed  to  run  their 
lawless  course  amid  the  complacent  grins  of  a  public 
only  too  grateful  for  any  new  sensation.  The  cult  of 
games  was  pursued  with  an  intensity  now  withdrawn 
from  the  older  religion,  which  had  to  be  "gingered  up" 
by  theological  "stunts,"  not  to  speak  of  magic  and 
necromancy. 

It  was  hke  the  masque  imagined  by  Edgar  Allan 
Poe  in  which  the  music  grew  wilder  and  wilder  amid 
the  fantastically  bedizened  rooms,  as  hour  by  hour  the 
apprehension  increased  of  something  unguessed-at  yet 
inevitable  that  should  end  the  revels  of  the  night  in 
silence  and  the  Red  Death. 


96  FACING  REALITY 

Anxious  watchers  on  the  Continent,  calculating  the 
hour  in  which  it  would  be  safe  to  strike,  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  England  was  a  degenerate  nation  in- 
capable of  defending  the  vast  wealth  which  she  could 
neither  distribute  nor  use. 

Germany,  galled  with  the  sense  of  having  come  too 
late  into  the  world  for  her  fair  share  of  it,  having 
rejected  our  proffered  alliance  with  contempt,  began 
openly  to  prepare  for  the  daj^  which  she  never  doubted 
was  coming,  when  John  Bull's  inflated  empire  should 
be  shattered  beyond  the  possibility  of  recovery. 
There  were  few  Germans  who  had  the  least  doubt  of 
the  righteousness  of  such  an  enterprise. 

But  Germany,  herself  inflated  with  the  pride  that 
sees  only  what  it  wants  to  see,  had  judged  superfi- 
cially. England  was  not  wholly  out  of  touch  with 
reality,  for  during  the  last  twenty  years,  despite  ap- 
pearances to  the  contrary,  she  had  been  making  a  not 
altogether  unsuccessful  effort  to  regain  it.  The  con- 
viction of  sin,  to  adopt  a  useful  phrase  from  theology, 
which  had  been  gaining  on  her  towards  the  end  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  had  become  acute  after  the  Boer 
fight  for  independence  had  pricked  the  bubble  of 
imperialist  Jingoism. 

The  cry  of  "wake  up,  England !"  which  was  heard 
during  the  first  years  of  the  new  century,  represented 
a  genuine,  if  vague  aspiration  to  set  our  house  in  order 
while  there  was  yet  time.  A  general  impression  was 
rife  that  all  was  not  well  with  England,  and  that  some 
national  effort  was  called  for  to  avert  imminent  over- 
throw from  abroad  and  upheaval  within.    Journalists 


GROUNDS  OF  HOPE  97 

were  turned  on  to  work  up  vivid  pictures  of  both 
events. 

The  agitation  for  protection,  whatever  its  motives 
or  advantages  as  a  poHcy,  had  at  least  the  good  effect 
of  causing  searchings  of  heart  as  to  the  foundations  of 
our  commercial  supremacy.  So,  also,  Lord  Roberts' 
campaign  on  behalf  of  conscription,  rendered  attrac- 
tive by  the  fancy  name  of  national  service,  drew  atten- 
tion to  the  possibility  of  our  having  shortly  to  fight  a 
losing  battle  for  our  very  existence. 

In  the  world  of  art  and  literature,  always  the  surest 
index  to  what  is  taking  place  in  a  nation's  innermost 
consciousness,  were  witnessed  a  number  of  tentative 
and  grotesque  movements  having  for  their  object  an 
escape  from  the  shams  and  sentimentalities  of  the  past 
into  the  only  reality  that  art  is  capable  of  expressing. 

The  reaction  palpably  overshot  its  owti  mark,  and 
produced  a  convention  of  heresy  as  tedious,  in  its  own 
way,  as  that  of  orthodoxy. 

A  picture  looking  like  a  Christmas  card  is  perhaps 
preferable  to  one  like  a  pile  of  sugar-loaves  seen  in 
delirium  tremens,  and  an  insipid  drawing-room  lyric 
is  not  so  bad  as  a  muck-heap  of  words  that  neither 
rhyme,  scan  nor  make  sense.  But  from  amidst  a  mass 
of  pretentious  ugliness  there  did  emerge  work  of 
enduring  value. 

Mr,  John  Masefield  may  have  vomited  mild  oaths 
with  all  the  pleasure  of  a  debutante  trying  to  get  a 
reputation  for  naughtiness,  but  this  did  not  prevent 
him  from  writing  verse  of  which  Chaucer,  to  whom  he 
is  more  akin  than  any  other  Enghsh  poet,  would  not 


98  FACING  REALITY 

have  been  ashamed.  Mr.  Epstein  may  have  made 
beautiful  women  into  nightmares,  but  some  of  his 
work  possesses  a  virihty  which,  if  never  pleasing,  is 
at  least  genuine  to  an  uncanny  degree. 

If  Mr.  Shaw,  with  Mr.  Kipling,  may  be  said  to 
have  dominated  the  'nineties,  the  most  significant  in- 
tellectual figure  of  the  period  before  the  war  is  prob- 
ably Mr.  H.  G.  Wells.  If  the  genius  of  Mr.  Shaw 
is  of  a  mainly  negative  order,  that  of  Mr.  Wells  is 
almost  feverishly  constructive.  He  is  like  some  rest- 
less demiurge  whose  instinct  is  always  compelling  him 
to  create  a  new  world  before  he  has  had  time  to  survey 
the  last  one  on  the  seventh  day  and  pronounce  it 
satisfactory.  He  has  undoubtedly  some  of  the  worst 
faults  of  the  age  in  which  he  has  lived. 

Even  Mr.  Chesterton  has  scarcely  thrown  off  a 
greater  quantity  of  half-baked  generalisations  or 
made  such  frank  appeals  to  the  gallery  who  take  a 
smart  phrase  for  a  true  one  without  pausing  to  think 
twice  about  the  matter.  He  makes  the  same  charac- 
ters and  situations  do  duty  in  successive  novels,  and 
prolix  verbiage  fill  the  gaps  in  his  inspiration,  with  the 
frankness  of  a  man  who,  finding  himself  bankrupt  of 
ideas,  goes  on  talking  till  they  come.  There  is  no 
modern  author  more  chargeable  with  the  faults  of 
taste  and  temper  that  every  conscientious  man  of  let- 
ters ought  to  avoid. 

And  yet,  throughout  the  whole  of  his  prolific  career, 
Mr.  Wells'  work  has  never  lacked  the  authentic  stamp 
of  greatness,  and  this  because  at  his  worst  and 
cheapest  he  has  never  wholly  lost  his  desire  to  see  the 


PROUNDS  OF  HOPE  99 

facts  as  they  are — his  strong,  redeeming  passion  for 
reality. 

To  a  discerning  eye,  something  of  the  evangelist 
might  have  been  detected  even  in  the  earliest  phase  of 
Mr.  Wells.  He  looked  out  upon  the  human  acquisi- 
tion of  mechanical  power  not  as  a  commonplace 
feature  of  everyday  life,  but  as  a  phenomenon  of  such 
wonderful  possibilities  that  it  set  his  imagination 
wildly  at  work,  ranging  over  the  future,  canvassing 
the  possibilities  of  turning  beasts  into  men  and  men 
into  gods,  of  travelling  in  a  few  hours  to  the  other  end 
of  time,  and  of  a  future  civilisation  of  vulgarity  and 
social  inequality  great  enough  to  turn  mankind  into 
two  races  of  dwarfed  imbeciles  and  cannibalistic 
gnomes  living  on  amid  the  ruins  of  a  power  whose 
secret  they  have  forgotten. 

It  was  this  sense  of  the  dominating  importance  of 
the  human  command  over  nature  that  enabled  Mr. 
Wells  to  get  a  truer  perspective  of  the  time  and  its 
needs  than  any  other  reformer.  Nothing  whatever 
was  sacred  to  him.  To  make  game  of  the  Almighty 
was  a  commonplace  achievement  compared  with  his 
frank  avowal  of  republicanism,  and  his  daring  to  turn 
the  searchlight  of  his  criticism  on  the  speeches  and 
acts  of  royalty. 

But  he  did  not  stop  at  criticism.  No  sooner  did  an 
idea  come  into  his  head  for  the  betterment  of  society 
than  he  dashed  it  down  in  book  or  article  form  and 
launched  it  at  the  world.  He  resembled  no  one  so 
much  as  the  Kaiser  in  his  ability  to  settle  all  the  prob- 


100  FACING  REALITY 

lems  of  humanity  to  his  own  complete  satisfaction, 
from  a  new  Bible  to  a  new  Utopia. 

He  did  not  even  shrink  from  turning  aside  to  write 
a  universal  history  of  the  widest  scope,  abashed  by 
no  difficulty,  pouring  scorn  over  whatever  he  could 
not  understand,  and  yet,  in  spite  of  all  its  faults,  a 
noble  work,  of  a  breadth  and  suggestiveness  such  as 
no  hving  academic  historian  has  attempted  to  rival. 
And,  most  important  of  all,  Mr.  Wells  more  than  any 
other  man  of  his  time  grasped  the  real  significance  of 
the  Great  War — ^that  either  steps  have  got  to  be  taken 
to  prevent  its  ever  recurring,  or  that  civilisation  has 
been  weighed  in  the  balances  and  found  wanting, 
numbered  and  finished. 

The  consideration  of  Mr.  Wells  has  carried  us  past 
the  period  immediately  preceding  the  war,  a  period 
on  which  his  own  career  throws  so  revealing  a  light. 
For  despite  all  its  ostentatious  triviality,  it  was  one 
of  a  vague  and  bewildered  groping  after  a  reality  that 
men  had  almost  lost  the  power  to  perceive  or  the 
will  to  attain.  And  even  to  our  Continental  critics 
was  afforded  sudden  and  startling  proof  that  the  reign 
of  triviaUty  had  not  yet  eaten  out  the  soul  of  the 
nation. 

Far  away  in  the  Antarctic  blizzard  a  little  party  of 
men — one  of  whose  comrades  had,  like  the  gallant 
gentleman  he  was,  laid  down  his  life  for  the  rest — com- 
posed themselves  to  die  with  a  calmness  and  dignity 
that  moved  the  admiration  of  Europe.  One  wonders 
whether  this  incident,  small  as  it  must  have  seemed 
if  measured  in  terms  of  human  life,  may  not  have 


GROUNDS  OF  HOPE  101 

caused  a  momentary  doubt  among  the  calculating 
strategists  of  Berlin  whether  an  attack  on  England 
would  be  quite  so  simple  an  affair  as  reports  of  her 
degeneracy  had  led  them  to  suppose. 

And  deep  down  in  the  masses  of  the  people  were  the 
stirrings  of  a  revival  whose  ultimate  tendency  nobody 
could  portend.  If  an  incredible  amount  of  shoddy 
was  turned  out  of  the  machines,  it  is  a  fact  by  no 
means  without  its  significance  that  a  demand  was 
growing  up  not  only  for  cheap  and  sometimes  taste- 
fully produced  editions  of  the  national  classics,  but 
also  for  works  giving  the  latest  results  of  scholarship 
in  eveiy  branch  of  science,  history  and  philosophy. 

A  fact  not  less  remarkable  was  the  gradual  discon- 
tinuance of  the  practice  of  reckless  lying  in  the  half- 
penny press.  The  astute  men  who  were  sensitive  to 
every  breeze  of  popular  opinion  began  to  discover  that 
the  report  of  an  imaginary  victory  or  the  heartless  in- 
vention of  a  massacre  of  Europeans  in  a  distant  coun- 
try might  drive  away  more  readers  than  it  attracted. 
And  along  with  this  went  an  increasing  demand  for 
the  intelligent  ventilation  of  social  problems  from 
every  point  of  view.  Such  signs,  however  qualified 
and  insufficient,  were  at  least  those  of  hope. 


CHAPTER    VI 


WAR  AND  REALITY 


TO  say  that  the  war  had  the  effect  of  bringing  the 
combatant  nations  face  to  face  with  naked  real- 
ity seems  a  commonplace,  but  war  has  its  shams  and 
conventions  no  less  than  peace,  and  there  is  one  sense 
in  which  war  itself  might  be  styled  the  greatest  illu- 
sion of  all,  a  truth  which  had  been  proclaimed  some 
years  before,  by  a  writer  calling  himself  Norman 
Angell. 

It  will  put  this  in  the  clearest  light  if  we  imagine 
one  of  Samuel  Butler's  tyrant  machines*  to  pay  a 
visit  to  the  outer  world  in  order  to  survey  the  fortunes 
of  its  brother  machines,  for  which  alone  it  has  eyes. 
It  finds  them  busily,  if  wastefully  engaged,  in  trans- 
forming the  raw  material  of  nature  into  useful  and 
kindly  forms,  and  distributing  these  over  the  world. 

There  are  certain  tubes  and  compounds  that  seem 
to  have  little  use  except  to  make  a  noise,  certain 
curiously  constructed  ships  that  cruise  about  with 
apparent  aimlessness  till  they  are  broken  up,  but  our 
visitor  soon  learns  not  to  be  surprised  at  waste. 

Suddenly,  for  no  apparent  reason,  everything  is 
changed.    The  tubes  and  compounds  burst  out  of  their 

*  Supposing  for  a  moment  that  the  machines  had  triumphed  instead 
of  being  suppressed. 

102 


WAR  AND  REALITY  103 

quiescence  into  violent  and  destructive  activity,  knock- 
ing to  pieces  with  an  efficiency  hitherto  unknown  in 
this  mad  world  not  only  all  the  other  machines  that 
come  in  their  way,  but  each  other  as  well. 

Then  a  strange  thing  happens.  The  whole  busi- 
ness of  making  matter  useful  comes  to  a  stop,  the 
community  of  machines  begins  to  behave  as  if  it  were 
possessed  of  devils,  not  only  are  the  decent  ones  every- 
where knocked  to  pieces  but  every  particle  of  energy 
is  put  into  the  multiplication  of  tubes  and  compounds 
in  numbers  and  malignancy,  like  the  germs  of  some 
foul  epidemic. 

The  use  of  the  strange  ships  is  now  only  too  plain, 
it  is  to  drive  off  the  seas,  or  preferably,  to  the  bottom, 
everything  that  floats.  Our  visiting  machine  perhaps 
comes  to  the  not  unreasonable  conclusion  that  its 
brothers  have  gi'own  so  sick  of  serving  the  purposes 
of  human  incompetence  that  they  have,  like  Samson, 
determined  to  destroy  themselves  and  their  masters 
in  one  tremendous  cataclysm. 

For  this,  and  nothing  else,  is  what  war  means.  The 
powers  of  production  have  become  powers  of  suicide ; 
the  human  race  is  engaged,  with  desperate  energy,  in 
pulling  down  on  its  own  head  the  edifice  of  civilisa- 
tion that  it  has  laboured  to  build.  Nobody  except  a 
few  individual  parasites  has  anything  to  gain,  the 
victor  is  only  a  little  less  worse  off  than  the  van- 
quished, and  the  causes  of  quarrel  are  often  so  insig- 
nificant as  to  be  almost  forgotten  in  the  course  of  the 
struggle. 

Who,  during  the  Franco-German  war,  realised  that 


104  FACING  REALITY 

this  was  ostensibly  another  war  of  the  Spanish  Suc- 
cession, or  who,  among  the  recent  combatants,  cared 
more  about  the  manner  of  Archduke  Franz  Ferdi- 
nand's death  than  that  of  Queen  Anne? 

Nor,  among  the  deeper  issues  that  come  to  hght  in 
the  course  of  wars,  is  there  any  incapable  of  settle- 
ment, to  the  advantage  of  everybody  concerned,  by 
businesslike  co-operation.  It  is  no  advantage  to  Rus- 
sians to  dragoon  Finns,  or  Englishmen  to  dragoon 
Irishmen,  or  one  Irishman  to  dragoon  another.  But 
at  tliis  point  one  is  brought  up  against  the  obscene 
fiction  of  national  honour. 

To  give  up  a  single  inch  of  territory,  to  allow 
justice  or  magnanimity  to  enter  into  one's  motives, 
even  to  submit  an  important  matter  to  arbitration  or 
acknowledge  a  wrong,  to  fail  to  combine  the  worst 
instincts  of  Shylock  and  Cain  with  the  stupidity  of  a 
school  bully  is  to  suffer  in  one's  honour.  And  until 
some  one  has  the  courage  roundly  to  damn  the  na- 
tional honour  or  to  laugh  at  it  with  all  the  heartiness 
of  a  Falstaff ,  it  seems  that  mankind  will  be  in  a  par- 
lous condition. 

This,  then,  may  be  regarded  as  the  first  and  great 
reahty  of  modern  war,  that  it  is  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  the  collective  suicide  of  humanity.  This  is  not 
to  say  that  it  would  be  safe  or  expedient  to  disarm  by 
oneself  in  face  of  neighbours  with  the  instincts  and 
motives  of  robbers,  but  it  does  mean  that  war  is  a 
foul  and  measureless  evil,  that  it  is  as  stupid  as  it 
is  wicked  and  as  fatal  as  it  is  stupid,  that  it  ought  to  be 
shorn  of  all  its  romance  and  known  for  the  detestable 


WAR  AND  REALITY  105 

thing  it  is,  that  even  a  victory  is,  as  Lao  Tse  pro- 
claimed more  than  two  thousand  years  ago,  a  thing 
to  be  bewailed  with  groans  and  lamentations. 

Those  who  maintain  that  war,  for  some  mystical 
or  pseudo-scientific  reason,  is  too  deeply  rooted  in 
human  nature  to  be  abolished,  are  thereby  pronounc- 
ing the  speedy  death  sentence  of  civilisation.  We 
must  either  get  rid  of  war  or  it  will  get  rid  of  us. 

When,  therefore,  we  say  that  the  outbreak  of  war 
brings  men  violently  into  contact  with  reality,  the 
statement  is  only  partially  true  so  long  as  men  can  be 
induced  to  go  on  imagining  that  war  is  something 
glorious  and  profitable.  And  this  is  the  first  feeling 
to  be  worked  up  in  every  country  concerned. 

The  magnificent  German  army  is  going  to  be  given 
a  chance  to  show  what  it  can  do  for  the  Fatherland; 
Holy  Russia  is  marching  westward  in  God's  cause 
under  her  Little  Father;  the  lost  provinces,  the  un- 
redeemed lands,  are  to  be  rescued  from  the  oppressor 
— all  is  rejoicing,  a  hectic  and  ghastly  exultation  to  the 
blare  of  military  music  as  the  wretched  workers  are 
dressed  up  and  dispatched  to  the  slaughter,  cheering 
and  singing  as  if  to  a  feast.  And  the  streets  are  filled 
with  hysterical  mobs,  drunk  with  the  excitement  of 
their  own  undoing,  and  roaring  out  their  own  death- 
songs  like  captive  Choctaws  destined  for  the  stake. 

Any  one  who  is  even  suspected  of  thwarting  the  will 
to  suicide  is  hounded  down  as  a  traitor,  to  doubt  of  a 
swift  and  ovei*whelming  victory  or  even  to  suggest 
that  the  enemy  may  have  a  case  is  to  make  oneself  an 
object  of  suspicion  if  not  of  active  hatred. 


106  FACING  REALITY 

Once  the  war  is  launched,  lying  and  humbug  on  a 
vast  scale  are  among  the  first  demands  of  national 
honour  and  safety.  An  atmosphere  has  to  be  created 
favourable  to  the  will  to  win.  Nothing,  it  is  pretty 
generally  agreed,  is  more  pernicious  to  this  than  the 
truth.  Men  must  be  prevented,  as  far  as  organised 
effort  can  avail,  from  visualising  reality  in  any  shape 
or  form. 

All  dispatches  from  the  front  must  be  carefully  gar- 
bled to  produce  the  impression  that  things  are  going 
as  well  as  possible,  and  the  only  object  in  putting  any- 
thing true  at  all  is  in  order  that  the  strangely  elastic 
limits  of  patriotic  credulity  may  not  be  strained  to 
breaking  point.  A  censorship  is  established  to  pre- 
vent any  fact  or  opinion  getting  into  circulation  that 
may  be  deemed  unsafe  by  those  in  authority.  Above 
all,  anything  tending  to  suggest  that  any  of  our  sol- 
diers may  be  less  brave  than  Lancelot  or  less  pure  than 
Galahad  is  a  crime  to  be  stamped  out  without  mercy. 

Hatred  is  acknowledged  to  be  one  of  the  most 
detestable  of  human  passions,  as  ruinous  to  the  in- 
telligence as  it  is  to  the  character,  and  yet  during  a 
war  it  is  everybody's  duty  to  whip  up  hatred  to  a 
pitch  of  homicidal  mania.  From  ordinary  human 
beings,  perhaps  not  quite  so  good  as  ourselves  but 
still  no  worse  than  other  foreigners,  the  enemy  are 
transformed  into  a  race  of  devils  such  as  has  never 
been  seen  since  the  beginning  of  the  world. 

The  records  of  past  centuries  are  ransacked  and 
falsified  in  order  to  establish  the  hitherto  unsus- 
pected truth  that  they  have  never  been  an3i;hing  else 


WAR  AND  REALITY  107 

than  devils.  Not  only  are  their  minds  sinks  of  in- 
iquity, but  their  very  forms  and  visages  are  depicted 
as  being  so  ugly  as  hardly  to  be  human. 

War  of  this  kind  does  not  think  of  sparing  either 
sex  or  age.  The  German  frau  and  her  children  are 
drawn  with  a  libellous  malice  that  is  heartily  recipro- 
cated by  the  pencils  of  our  opponents.  It  seems  less 
shocking  than  it  might  have  done  when  vermin  of 
this  kind  happen  to  be  put  out  of  the  way  in  the  course 
of  legitimate  warfare,  which  means  warfare  as  waged 
by  our  own  side. 

It  is  noticeable  that  the  very  devilry  of  which  we 
try  to  convict  oui'  opponents  is  often  boastfully 
claimed  for  our  own  men.  Terrible  stories  were  pub- 
lished in  the  papers,  often  on  the  flimsiest  evidence,  of 
prisoners  having  been  killed  by  the  enemy.  A  Ger- 
man general  was  reported,  whether  truly  or  not,  to 
have  given  such  orders  to  his  own  troops. 

And  yet  in  how  many  clubs  and  mess-rooms  was  it 
not  confided,  no  doubt  with  little  truth  but  with  full 
approval,  that  such  and  such  a  regiment  had  sworn  to 
take  no  more  prisoners,  and  even  more  horrible  tales 
were  passed  round  as  good  jokes,  such  as  the  one 
about  the  three  German  soldiers  who  were  bayonetted 
in  the  act  of  praying  to  God,  and  of  the  party  of  mop- 
pers  up  who  called,  on  Christmas  Eve,  down  a  dugout 
from  which  had  arisen  a  cry  of  "Kamerad" — "Here's 
a  Christmas  present  for  you,"  and  threw  in  a  couple 
of  Mills'  bombs. 

Long  before  there  was  any  talk  of  conscription  in 
England,  every  one  of  the  combatants  who  was  not 


108  FACING  REALITY 

openly  atheistic  had  pressed  God  into  his  ranks,  ignor- 
ing the  fact  that  the  Christian  Bible  had  reported 
God's  Son  as  advocating  in  the  most  downright  terms 
the  doctrine  of  non-resistance  to  evil,  and  as  having 
warned  those  who  take  the  sword  that  they  shall  perish 
by  the  sword. 

The  German,  having  less  sense  of  humour  than  any 
one  else,  succeeded  in  rising  to  greater  heights  of  so- 
lemnity about  his  almighty  comrade,  and  one  of  his 
most  admired  poets  wrote  a  deliciously  serious  descrip- 
tion of  the  Archangel  Michael  being  granted  leave 
from  his  ordinary  duties  to  act  as  standard-bearer  to 
Prince  Rupprecht  of  Bavaria. 

But  the  English  were  little  behindhand  in  the  fury 
with  which  they  were  wont  to  arraign  any  poor  old 
Bishop  who,  in  momentary  recollection  of  the  fact 
that  he  was  after  all  supposed  to  be  a  Christian,  ven- 
tured politel}^  to  doubt  whether  his  Master  would 
approve  as  much  as  was  generally  supposed  of  poison 
gas  and  the  indiscriminate  blowing  to  bits  of  civilians, 
even  on  the  holy  plea  of  two  eyes  for  an  eye,  and 
grinders,  molars,  incisors  and  all  for  a  tooth. 

The  worst  of  all  this  lying  and  pretence  was  that  it 
was  at  least  as  apt  to  defeat  its  object  as  to  achieve 
it.  If,  as  many  believe,  there  is  a  real  and  quite  special 
case  against  the  Germans,  it  will  probably  never  be 
driven  home. 

Such  sophisms  will  pass  muster  as  that  of  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw,  that  when  the  whole  population  of 
any  country,  including  all  its  criminal  elements,  is 
drafted  into  the  ranks,  and  has  its  most  brutal  instincts 


WAR  AND  REALITY  109 

no  longer  restrained  but  encouraged,  outrages  of 
every  kind  will  be  certain  to  happen. 

And  when  some  Entente  advocate  replies  that  such 
an  argument  begs  the  question,  and  that  outrages  like 
the  sacking  of  Louvain  and  the  deportation  of  the 
girls  of  Lille  were  part  of  a  policy  of  crime,  thought 
out  in  cold  blood  and  deliberately  pursued,  the  im- 
partial neutral  will  most  likely  shrug  his  shoulders  and 
remark  that  this  is  what  any  patriot  always  thinks 
about  his  opponents.  For  it  is  the  proverbial  fate  of 
liars  that  nobody  believes  them  even  when  they  are 
speaking  the  truth. 

Nor  is  this  the  only  penalty  that  Hfe  exacts  from 
liars.  Some  of  the  dust  they  throw  always  gets  into 
their  own  eyes,  and  they  deceive  no  one  so  much  as 
themselves.  The  constant  exaggeration  of  every  suc- 
cess and  the  turning  of  defeats  into  victories  was  a 
childishly  stupid  policy,  because  any  one  with  more 
sense  of  fact  than  those  who  regulated  the  national 
falsification  would  have  known  that  nothing  relaxes 
the  English  temperament  so  much  as  the  sense  of 
everything  going  well,  nor  stiffens  it  to  greater  deter- 
mination than  when  we  are  known  to  be  in  a  tight 
place. 

The  overthrow  of  the  fifth  army  in  1918  was  almost 
worth  while,  if  only  for  its  effect  in  pulling  the  nation 
together  and  enabling  the  Government  to  take  the 
most  drastic  measures  to  secure  victory  with  hardly 
a  breath  of  serious  protest.  And  the  constant  work- 
ing up  of  the  will  to  victory  could  not  fail  to  have  its 
effect  in  destrojdng  the  national  sense  of  proportion, 


110  FACING  REALITY 

until  victory  began  to  be  regarded  as  an  end  all-suffi- 
cient in  itself,  and  the  fatal  belief  got  about  that  if 
only  we  could  get  the  Bosche  doAvn,  and  then  kick 
him  into  a  jelty,  the  golden  age  of  peace  and  prosper- 
ity would  follow  of  its  own  accord.  Our  hardest  and 
most  necessary  task  after  the  war  is  that  of  unlearning 
most  that  we  taught  ourselves  during  it. 

But  at  least  the  drafting  of  the  greater  part  of  our 
able-bodied  manhood  into  the  army,  and  the  ordeal 
of  fire  and  horror  through  which  they  passed  would 
be  enough  to  give  them  the  capacity  for  facing  reality! 
This  is  true,  in  a  sense,  and  perhaps  the  greatest  of 
all  hopes  for  the  future  is  in  the  effect  of  that  tre- 
mendous experience  in  the  overturning  of  all  conven- 
tional values  and  starting  the  future  with  a  clean  slate. 

But  the  advantages  even  of  this  sternest  of  schools 
are  not  without  qualification.  For  it  is  in  the  very 
nature  of  an  army  to  create  a  false  and  artificial  stand- 
ard of  values,  and  to  sap  both  the  foundations  of 
character  and  the  power  of  independent  judgment. 

Pretence  is  the  soul  of  an  army  in  peace  time.  It 
only  starts  to  perform  the  function  for  which  it  was 
intended  when  war  is  actually  declared;  during  the 
whole  of  the  rest  of  the  time  it  is  preparing  for  some- 
thing that  may  never  happen  or  disguising  itself  in 
fancy  dress  for  pin-poses  of  public  entertainment.  It 
is  only  to  be  expected  that  of  all  public  institutions  the 
army  should  be  the  one  least  affected  by  reahty. 

Every  one  must  have  observed  the  contrast  between 
the  soldier  and  the  sailor,  between  the  alertness,  pro- 
fessional keenness  and  sharpened  wits  of  the  typical 


WAR  AND  REALITY  111 

naval  captain  or  lieutenant,  and  the  mental  lethargy 
that  grows  with  every  step  in  regimental  seniority  in 
all  but  a  few  favoured  instances. 

The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  sailor  may  not 
have  the  enemy,  but  he  has  always  the  sea;  the  slight- 
est mistake  in  the  handling  even  of  the  largest  battle- 
ship may  result  in  sudden  disaster.  The  navigation 
of  a  ship  is  life  in  miniature,  it  is  an  unceasing  adapta- 
tion to  an  ever-changing  reality  without.  And  for 
weeks  and  months  together  the  sailor  is  confined  to  his 
ship,  his  opportunities  for  poodle-faking,  to  use  the 
vivid  term  by  which  the  military  officer  describes  so 
important  a  part  of  his  peace-time  activities,  are  few 
and  brief.  Hence  the  marked  difference  in  spirit  be- 
tween the  two  services. 

Failure  in  the  army  is  viewed  with  a  tolerant  and 
compassionate  eye,  it  is  generally  hushed  up  and  even 
when  sheer  incompetence  has  widowed  so  many  women 
and  orphaned  so  many  children  that  a  leader  has  had 
to  retire  from  the  fighting  line,  a  safe  and  comfortable 
job  can  nearly  always  be  found  for  him  at  home,  or, 
still  better,  in  India,  if  only  the  right  people  are  inter- 
ested in  him. 

But  woe  betide  the  unfortunate  sailor,  whom  an 
accident  to  his  ship  brings  within  range  of  a  naval 
court  martial !  The  fault  may  be  venial  and  he  one  of 
the  most  promising  men  in  the  service,  but  he  is 
broken  for  all  that. 

It  was  thus  that  the  navy  accomplished  with  un- 
failing efficiency  a  task  whose  difficulty  a  proud  and 
traditional  silence  has  prevented  the  public  from  ever 


112  FACING  REALITY 

realising.  How  near  we  were  to  a  disaster,  complete 
and  final,  when  Jellicoe  was  holding  the  North  Sea 
with  inadequate  forces  and  a  base  open  to  submarines, 
or  how  narrowly  we  escaped  what,  according  to  Ger- 
man Admiralty  calculations,  was  the  certainty  of  sur- 
render by  starvation,  was  no  theme  for  sensational 
journalism,  though  Nelson  himself  never  faced  such 
a  crisis  nor  won  such  a  victory. 

But  the  army  tradition  was  one  neither  of  efficiency 
nor  silence.  The  junior  service  suffered  from  the 
necessity  of  having  to  face  two  ways  at  once,  it  was 
only  half  military,  and  the  other  half  social.  The 
crack  regiments  were  indeed  those  in  which  the  social 
side  of  the  profession  most  predominated,  and  such 
a  convention  of  futility  was  imposed  that  admittedly 
able  officers  have  been  known  to  resign*  or  get  seconded 
owing  to  the  unpopularity  they  have  incurred  by  their 
unwillingness  to  associate  with  the  chaste  and  refined 
beauties  of  chorus  and  ballet. 

Nevertheless  the  public  school  and  regimental  spirit 
did  manage  to  turn  out  officers  of  unsurpassed  cour- 
age and  with  a  knack  of  popular  leadership  that  was 
probably  unique  among  the  armies  of  the  world.  They 
were,  in  fact,  finely  adapted  for  the  kind  of  war  that 
had  won  the  campaigns  of  Wellington  and  the  battles 
of  Raglan.  So  long  as  the  conditions  of  this  warfare 
were  in  any  way  reproduced,  they  performed  marvels. 

At  the  first  battle  of  Ypres  they  had  a  task  only 
differing  in  length  of  line  and  days  from  that  of 
Waterloo,  and  by  holding  the  German  rush  they  per- 
haps saved  the  world  for  civilisation.     But  for  the 


WAR  AND  REALITY  113 

new  war  of  rival  machinists  the  old  system  was  neither 
intended  nor  in  any  way  fitted.  All  the  etiquette  and 
ceremonial,  the  correct  dress  and  close-order  drill 
were  not  only  useless  but  harmful,  as  tending  to  per- 
petuate a  habit  of  mind  the  very  reverse  of  efficient. 

For  what  was  it  that  the  old  military  ideal  had 
aimed  at  in  the  training  of  the  common  soldier?  It 
was  nothing  more  nor  less  than  to  provide  homo- 
geneous units  of  flesh  and  blood  capable  of  respond- 
ing to  orders  with  the  precision  of  well-oiled  machines. 

This  was  accomplished  by  a  simple  process  of  form- 
ing habits  by  suggestion.  Positively,  the  soldier  was 
to  be  stimulated  by  an  impressive  ceremonial,  by  a 
constantly  inculcated  loyalty  to  the  person  of  the 
sovereign  and  the  colours  of  his  regiment,  and  by  a 
tacit  recognition  of  his  officer  as  of  a  man  of  another 
caste  and  clay,  to  whom  one  might  not  even  presume 
to  speak  without  the  intervention  of  an  N.C.O. 

But  the  great  stimulus  was  that  of  fear.  Much  to 
the  despair  of  the  old  type  of  officer,  the  torture  of 
flogging  had  been  abolished,  but  from  the  very  mo- 
ment he  entered  the  barracks  the  recruit  was  taught 
that  the  minutest  deviation  from  the  word  of  a  su- 
perior was  an  unthinkable  crime,  of  which  the  conse- 
quences were  swift  and  overwhelming. 

In  close  order  drill,  the  bedrock  of  his  training,  his 
minutest  action  was  under  control  and  his  attention 
was  perpetually  on  the  strain  for  fear  that  some 
clumsily  executed  movement  should  bring  him  before 
a  tribunal  in  which  conviction  was  a  matter-of-course 
and  self-defence  not  only  futile  but  often  dangerous. 


114  FACING  REALITY 

If  your  sergeant  said  you  were  guilty,  it  was  bad 
policy  to  be  innocent. 

Thus  was  formed  the  old  regular  soldier,  recruited 
from  the  poorest  class  and  often  driven  to  take  the 
shilling  by  starvation.  There  was  only  one  thing  to 
do  with  him,  which  was  so  powerfully  to  appeal  to  his 
sense  of  fear  that  when  it  came  to  a  fight,  he  would 
obey  orders  as  the  line  of  least  resistance,  and  be  more 
afraid  of  his  superiors  than  of  the  enemj^  And  so 
well  did  it  work,  that  with  an  army  recruited  largely 
from  the  gaols,  and  which  he  himself  described  as 
the  scum  of  the  earth,  the  Duke  of  Wellington  found 
himself  able  to  conquer  Napoleon's  best  Marshals 
and  finest  veterans,  and  at  last  Napoleon  himself. 

But  it  is  obvious  that  success  can  only  be  hoped  for 
when  the  orders  are  very  simple  and  easily  communi- 
cated. You  cannot  develop  and  kill  initiative  at  one 
and  the  same  time.  And  it  is  obvious  that  you  can 
only  make  a  drilled  automaton  out  of  a  man  by  root- 
ing out  initiative  and  independence  of  character.  The 
soldier,  who  has  all  his  movements  controlled,  who  is 
fed  and  dressed  and  told  where  to  go  as  if  he  were  a 
baby,  must  lose  by  atrophy  the  power  of  controlling 
himself. 

The  new  type  of  war  put  the  old  type  of  soldier 
completely  out  of  date.  Cavalry,  in  all  but  the  most 
remote  fields  and  against  the  most  backward  enemies, 
were  not  only  a  useless  but  even  a  mischievous  arm,  as 
the  generals,  too  many  of  whom  were  cavalrymen, 
could  not  get  it  out  of  their  heads  that  a  "show"  of 


WAR  AND  REALITY  115 

some  kind  must  be  arranged  for  them.*  With  the 
invention  and  development  of  the  land-battleship  the 
infantryman  is  bound  to  go  the  way  of  his  fellow- 
fighter  at  hand-to-hand,  the  boarder  in  the  navy. 

There  is  no  use  for  anybody  under  modern  condi- 
tions except  the  man  operating  and  protected  by  the 
machine.  And  to  turn  the  old  type  of  officer  or  sol- 
dier to  this  work  is  about  as  intelligent  a  procedure 
as  asking  some  swiper  of  the  village  green  to  play  in 
a  Test  Match.  The  efficiency  of  our  air  force  is  prob- 
ably due  to  the  fact  that  it  is  the  branch  of  the  service 
with  the  fewest  traditions  and  that  its  officers  are 
notoriously  the  least  soldierlike  in  the  old  sense. 

The  volunteer,  then,  who  had  at  the  beginning  of 
the  war  been  bombarded  with  such  appeals  as  "be  a 
sport"  or  visions  of  girls  shouting  their  love  to  him 
on  his  victorious  return,  found  himself  serving  his 
apprenticeship  in  what  was  an}i:hing  but  a  school  of 
reality.  Perhaps  inevitably,  under  the  circumstances, 
nobody  thought  of  an}i;hing  else  than  of  imitating  the 
regular  system  as  closely  as  possible. 

For  the  most  part,  the  new  soldier  conscientiously 
did  his  best  to  adapt  himself  cheerfully  to  the  strange 
atmosphere.  If  he  happened  to  be  bullied  by  some 
foul-mouthed  ruffian  of  a  drill-sergeant,  he  accepted 
it  as  part  of  the  game,  he  perfected  himself  in  all  sorts 
of  useless  accomplishments  with  the  faith  of  a  child 
who  believes  that  when  he  is  grown  up  he  will  appre- 

*  As  at  the  first  Battle  of  Cambrai.  In  this  connection  the  remarks  of 
Marshal  Haig  as  to  the  continued  usefulness  of  cavalry  in  European 
War  are  worth  studying.  The  Bourbon  family  can  hardly  claim  a 
monopoly  of  their  most  remembered  characteristic. 


116  FACING  REALITY 

ciate  the  advantage  of  knowing  the  names  of  the 
Andes,  he  even  tried  to  bend  his  mind  to  a  proper 
sense  of  his  inferiority  to  any  one  of  the  squire  class 
with  a  star  on  his  sleeve.  And  when  some  beef-witted 
general,  insufficiently  supplied  Avith  ammunition, 
launched  him  at  uncut  wire  swept  by  machine  guns, 
or  left  him  unsupported  by  reserves — ^that  was  part 
of  the  game  too. 

But  four-and-a-half  years  of  war  may  light  a  candle 
for  the  soldier  that  all  the  darkness  of  an  obsolete 
system  may  not  avail  to  put  out.  Some  things  are 
gradually  forced  upon  his  consciousness.  He  sees 
the  horror  and  the  beastliness  of  it  all,  he  knows  that 
war  is  not  the  splendid  and  exhilarating  thing  it  has 
been  painted.  He  has  found  out  all  its  daily  sordid- 
ness,  the  sheer  boredom  that  more  than  the  fear  of 
death  itself  makes  men  long  for  a  wound  severe 
enough  to  get  them  sent  home. 

And  on  some  men,  at  least,  was  dawning  a  sense 
of  the  pretentious  humbug,  the  solemn  farce  of  all 
this  military  make-believe.  They  even  began  to  sus- 
pect that  the  dreaded  commander  whom  they  occa- 
sionally encountered  strutting  and  blasting  masked 
a  mind  no  more  intelligent  than  his  outward  form. 
And  then  they  began,  some  of  them,  to  wonder 
whether,  if  the  army  itself  were  three  parts  humbug, 
the  same  might  not  be  the  plight  of  a  civilisation  in 
which  such  horror  and  stupidity  were  the  rule. 

They  too,  like  the  man  in  rags,  began  to  realise 
what  a  burden  pressed  upon  the  back  of  humanity. 


WAR  AND  REALITY  117 

and  to  ask  what  they  and  all  of  us  might  do  to  be 
saved. 

And  the  war  at  last  forced  us,  in  spite  of  ourselves, 
to  revise,  at  least  for  the  time  of  stress  and  to  an  im- 
perfect extent,  the  stupid  and  feckless  methods  that 
had  become  habitual  with  us  in  matters  of  national 
concern. 

It  seems  almost  incredible  that  when  war  broke 
out  nothing  of  the  kind  seems  to  have  occurred  to 
any  one.  A  party  ministry  thrown  up  by  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  a  notoriously  corrupt  political  system,  was 
left  to  muddle  along  at  a  time  when  a  single  mistake 
might  spell  ruin  past  repair.  Everybody  was  allowed 
to  do  that  which  was  right  in  his  own  eyes,  no  matter 
whether  he  was  a  drone  or  a  parasite. 

Cowards,  by  the  thousand,  continued  to  enjoy 
themselves  at  their  usual  pursuits  and  others,  more 
far-sighted,  rushed  into  Government  workshops  and 
dockyards  or  whatever  might  render  them  immune 
from  possible  conscription.  It  soon  came  to  be  dis- 
covered that  the  less  a  man  risked  his  skin,  the  more 
he  got  paid,  and  a  bonus  of  several  shillings  a  day 
for  having  preferred  discretion  to  valour  was  not 
considered  either  unnatural  or  intolerable. 

A  legion  of  sharks  and  swindlers  were  invited  to 
batten  on  the  country's  need,  and  even  honest  manu- 
facturers could  hardly  help  becoming  profiteers.  And 
when  workmen  were  asked  to  abandon  the  hardly  won 
rules  of  their  unions  they  marked  with  bitterness  that 
not  the  smallest  sacrifice  was  exacted  from  the  capi- 


118  FACING  REALITY 

talist,  who  retained  all  his  inflated  profits  whilst  others 
were  sacrificing  everything  they  held  dear. 

But  towards  the  end  of  the  war  sheer  necessity  com- 
pelled advance  in  national  self -management.  A  few 
of  the  ministerial  heads  of  administrative  departments 
were  actually  selected  for  their  competence  and  not 
merely  for  political  reasons. 

The  great  bulk  of  the  nation's  machinery,  instead 
of  being  employed  in  wasteful  and  mutually  destruc- 
tive competition,  was  now  intelligently  directed  to  a 
national  purpose,  even  though  this  was  dictated  by 
the  miserable  necessity  of  destruction.  Our  food, 
when  the  enemy  was  nearest  starving  us  to  death,  was 
so  well  shared  out  that  many  of  the  poorer  people 
were  actually  better  provided  for  than  in  times  of 
fullest  prosperity.  Our  shipping,  now  controlled 
upon  national  lines,  defied  all  the  efforts  of  the  sub- 
marines. 

This  was  much,  and  enough  to  suggest  what  might 
be  done  if  the  nation  were  as  determined  upon  victory 
in  peace  as  in  war.  But  it  was  little  enough  in  all 
conscience  when  we  consider  that  to  the  very  end 
jobbery  and  influence  were  rife  in  every  branch  of 
national  service,  that  our  unhappy  soldiers  were  de- 
livered over  to  the  murderous  insufficiency  of  cavalry 
and  Etonian  commanders,  that  a  shameful  distinction 
was  taken  for  granted  between  a  man  who  might  be 
forced  to  die  and  one  who  might  only  be  bribed  to 
work  for  his  country,  that  the  profits  of  the  man  in 
the  office  were  more  sacred  than  the  life  of  his  brother 


WAR  AND  REALITY  119 

in  the  trenches  find  that  the  corruption  of  our  politics 
went  on  unrepentant  and  unchallenged. 

With  the  peace  came  the  reaction  that  every  one 
had  anticipated.  That  the  snapping  of  the  strain 
should  bring  an  attempt  to  wipe  out  everything  con- 
nected with  the  war  and  to  revive  the  atmosphere  of 
five  years  before,  was  natural  and  human.  But  re- 
action itself  was  an  inevitable  and  temporary  rebound, 
and  only  time  will  prove  how  much  the  war  has  taught 
us  of  the  things  appertaining  to  our  peace. 

Those  of  us  who  have  looked  reality  in  the  face  and 
lived  have  to  see  to  it  that  we  never  lose  that  vision, 
that  started  from  our  slumbers  by  so  terrible  a  warn- 
ing we  do  not,  now  the  long  line  is  silent  from  Belf ort 
to  the  sea,  compose  ourselves  again  to  sleep.  The 
voice  of  our  next  awakening  may  be  that  which  calls 
mankind  to  the  judgment  and  death-sentence  of  a 
civilisation  it  has  gained  only  to  abuse. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THINKING   IN   A   PASSION 

TO  talk  of  reformation  without  indicating  the  way 
would  be  idle  mockery.  And  every  reformation 
has  its  first  seat  in  the  mind.  All  day  long  a  stream  of 
perceptions  is  pouring  into  our  minds  from  the  world 
outside,  and  every  one  of  these  starts  on  a  progress 
whose  end  is  action  of  some  kind.  Nothing  in  thought 
stands  still,  nothing  is  lost.  But  between  perception 
and  action  almost  any  change  may  occur.  The  brain 
is  at  work  combining,  transforming,  delaying. 

The  new  arrival  from  without  may  have  to  wait  long 
before  it  comes  to  deed,  it  may  be  stored  in  the  sub- 
consciousness where  it  remains  unmarked  but  not  for 
one  moment  inactive,  like  an  unborn  child  putting  on 
flesh  and  bone  against  its  going  forth  into  the  world. 
Thus  between  the  perception  of  reality  and  life's  con- 
sequent adaptation  intervenes  the  process  of  thought 
by  which  the  nature  of  that  adaptation  is  determined. 
In  other  words,  reality  demands  a  brain  to  receive  it, 
and  by  thought,  and  thought  alone,  are  we  justified 
or  condemned. 

If,  then,  we  are  to  achieve  the  supreme  task  of 

putting  ourselves  right  with  reality,  we  must  address 

ourselves  to   the   reformation   of   our   own   minds. 

120 


THINKING  IN  A  PASSION  121 

Hitherto  the  trouble  has  been  that  mankind  have  suc- 
ceeded in  creating  a  wholly  new  reality  for  themselves 
without  ever  seeing  that  a  development  in  the  world 
of  matter  demands  a  corresponding  development  in 
the  world  of  mind. 

Men  have  been  increasing  their  own  powers  and 
the  complication  of  life  with  the  result,  so  far,  that 
they  have  imposed  the  work  of  the  twentieth  century 
upon  an  eighteenth  century  brain.  Or,  to  take  an 
older  illustration,  the  new  wine  has  been  put  into  the 
old  bottles,  and  both  are  in  a  way  to  perish. 

In  a  perfect  mind,  so  far  as  we  can  conceive  of  it, 
every  scrap  of  information  that  came  from  without 
would  be  swiftly  yet  calmly  registered,  and  in  accord- 
ance with  the  information  all  action  would  be  regu- 
lated. 

A  man  who  wishes  to  buy  a  new  house  or  go  on  an 
expensive  holidaj^  does  well  to  ascertain  from  his  pass- 
book exactly  what  his  resources  amount  to.  It  is 
comforting  to  think  that  you  have  a  thousand  a  year 
when  you  have  only  five  hundred,  but  it  is  a  bad  as- 
sumption on  which  to  conduct  your  business.  And 
yet  there  is  hardly  one  of  us  who  does  not  order  his 
mental  life  after  a  fashion  no  less  absurd. 

The  first  thing  we  do  with  any  information  that  our 
senses  give  us  is  to  distort  it  to  suit  our  own  wishes, 
and  then  to  act  as  if  the  distorted  version  were  the 
true  one. 

When  we  talk  of  putting  an  eighteenth  century 
brain  to  do  the  work  of  the  twentieth,  we  have  only 
to  think  of  Dr.  Johnson,  whom  both  his  own  contem- 


122  FACING  REALITY 

poraries  and  posterity  have  agreed  in  honouring  as 
the  representative  man  of  his  time,  the  "grand  Cham" 
of  EngHsh  letters.  And  yet  Johnson  himself,  for  all 
his  uprightness  and  lucidity,  possessed  a  mind  wholly 
incapable  of  realising  the  difference  between  what 
was,  and  what  he  wanted  to  be. 

When  he  reported  the  debates  in  Parliament  he 
confessed,  not  without  a  certain  humorous  satisfac- 
tion, that  he  did  not  allow  the  Wliig  dogs  to  have  the 
best  of  it.  It  would  never  have  occurred  to  him  to  say, 
"Sir,  so  addicted  is  the  heart  of  man  to  the  practice 
of  falsehood,  that  I  will  neither  endure  to  perceive, 
nor  suffer  others  to  become  acquainted  with,  any  par- 
ticle of  truth  or  reason  tending  to  the  detriment  of 
those  opinions,  that  my  prejudices  and  passions  have 
imposed  upon  me."  And  yet  this  would  have  been 
no  less  than  true. 

Johnson's  idea  in  talking  was  seldom  to  arrive  at 
the  truth,  but  most  often  to  get  the  better  of  his  com- 
panion, and  when  he  failed  to  do  this,  instead  of 
thanking  the  other  man  for  putting  him  right,  he 
would  lose  his  temper  with  him,  and  try  to  carry  his 
point  by  violence.  If  he  missed  his  man,  it  was  said, 
he  would  knock  him  down  with  the  butt.  Conversa- 
tion was,  in  fact,  a  duel. 

This  habit  of  thinking  in  a  passion  is  one  of  the 
most  deeply  rooted  in  the  human  mind ;  in  fact,  it  may 
be  said  that  in  this  respect  man  has  not  even  yet  got 
beyond  the  animal  stage.  Even  if  we  accept  all  the 
wonderful  stories  of  brute  sagacity,  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  no  member  of  the  brute  creation,  except  in  one 


THINKING  IN  A  PASSION  123 

or  two  extraordinary  and  doubtful  instances,  ever 
came  to  the  point  of  thinking  anything  out. 

The  animal  is  guided  by  his  passions.  The  bull 
sees  some  one  in  a  red  shawl  going  across  his  field  and 
feels  impelled  to  attack  it,  the  spaniel  at  tea-time 
feels  himself  hungry  or  greedy  and  comes  and  demon- 
strates at  the  drawing-room  window.  The  furthest 
the  beast  ever  gets  is  when  an  habitual  fear  impels  a 
wily  old  rat  to  deny  himself  a  piece  of  cheese  in  a 
trap,  or  makes  the  inhabitants  of  the  jungle  keep  away 
from  the  tastiest-looking  man  beneath  a  mosquito  net. 

This  is  no  doubt  a  necessity  of  development.  The 
desires  of  a  beast  are  few  and  his  problems  relatively 
simple,  and  therefore  the  passions  that  rouse  him  into 
activity  are  tolerably  efficient  guides.  The  beast,  to 
put  it  bluntly,  feels  what  he  wants  and  goes  for  it  by 
the  most  direct  route. 

For  a  man  this  simple  procedure  is  not  enough. 
Before  deciding  to  act  he  has  to  arrive  at  an  impartial 
estimate  of  the  situation,  to  understand  it  in  all  its 
bearings,  and  to  appreciate  as  nearly  as  possible  the 
effect  of  any  proposed  line  of  conduct.  And  in  all 
this  the  first  thing  necessary  is  to  eliminate  the  per- 
sonal element,  to  think,  as  we  say,  dispassionately. 

This  is  just  what  mankind  in  the  past  has  never 
been  able  to  do.  The  truth  is  what  I  want  it  to  be, 
and  anybody  who  thinks  differently  is  an  object  of 
passionate  hatred.  James  I.,  a  really  intelligent  man 
of  a  not  unkindly  disposition,  once  condescended  to 
argue  with  two  men  who  held  different  views  from 
those    which   happened    to    be    fashionable    on    the 


124  FACING  REALITY 

Trinity.  But  the  first  word  of  respectful  opposition 
was  too  much  for  his  royal  temper.  He  began  to  dis- 
pute with  his  foot  instead  of  his  tongue,  and  the  two 
poor  men  were  burnt  alive. 

It  would  have  been  almost  as  much  as  his  throne 
was  worth  to  have  said,  "Here  are  we  three  groping 
in  the  dark  for  the  truth,  in  Heaven's  name  let  us  sit 
down  and  see  what  help  any  one  of  us  can  give  to  the 
others!  It  is  too  probable  that  none  of  us  is  quite 
correctly  informed  about  the  management  of  this  uni- 
verse around  us."  Some  such  answer  would  seem  the 
obvious  dictate  of  common  sense. 

Recent  research  has  thrown  a  wholly  new  light 
both  on  the  passions  themselves  and  the  extent  to 
which  they  influence  our  thought.  The  study*  of 
dreams  has  shown  that  when  once  the  power  of  judg- 
ment is  relaxed,  the  mind  gives  unrestrained  scope 
to  its  natural  tendency  to  construct  a  world  in  the 
image  of  its  own  passions. 

To  say,  with  the  Austrian  doctor,  Freud,  that  a 
dream  is  a  repressed  wish  is  to  simplify  the  facts  un- 
duly, unless  we  count  fear  as  a  negative  wish,  for  if 
we  trace  the  source  of  our  dreams  we  shall  often  find 
it  as  much  in  our  fears  as  our  desires.  In  contrast 
with  the  world  without,  which  comes  to  us  through 
our  senses,  the  dream  world  is  built  up  by  our  passions 
out  of  a  confusion  of  memories. 

If  we  could  keep  our  dreams  for  bed-time,  all  would 
be  well.  But,  unfortunately,  we  are  perpetually  try- 
ing to  transform  our  image  of  the  waking  world  into 
the  likeness  of  our  dreams.     We  see  not  the  thing 


THINKING  IN  A  PASSION  125 

that  is,  but  the  thing  that  we  want  to  find,  or  fear  to 
find.  The  saint  who  has  prayed  for  the  sight  of  his 
Master  will  see  the  figure  on  the  Rood  incline  its 
head,  or  the  longed-for  vision  take  shape  before  him. 

It  is  not  at  all  improbable  that  the  Roman  soldiers, 
when  hard  pressed  by  Lake  Regillus,  actually  thought 
they  saw  the  Twin  Brethren  fighting  at  their  head, 
as  some  of  our  own  men  appear  to  have  seen  angels 
or  archers  during  the  retreat  from  Mons.  And  the 
most  extraordinary  instance  of  all  is  that  of  the  Rus- 
sian legions,  who  were  literally  created  by  the  tension 
prevailing  at  the  most  anxious  moments  of  the  war, 
and  whose  imaginary  forms  were  seen  passing  through 
England  by  sane  and  level-headed  people  all  over  the 
country. 

As  with  our  desires,  so  also  with  our  fears.  The 
history  of  panics  throws  many  a  curious  sidelight  on 
the  fear  dream  in  real  life.  Once  in  a  South  American 
theatre  some  practical  joker  started  an  alarm  of  fire, 
and  there  were  those  who  actually  felt  the  molten  lead 
from  the  roof  dropping  on  them. 

At  the  blockade  of  Santiago  de  Cuba  by  the  Ameri- 
can fleet,  a  false  alarm  of  Spanish  torpedo-boats 
started  the  Americans  blazing  away  for  the  next  half - 
hour  at  the  crest  of  waves  under  the  firm  impression 
that  they  were  being  attacked.  A  similar  mistake 
caused  the  ill-fated  Russian  Baltic  fleet  to  fire  into 
our  fishing  boats  off  the  Dogger  Bank  and  even  on 
some  of  their  own  craft. 

One  of  the  darkest  chapters  of  himian  history  is 
that  of  the  persecution  of  suspected  witches,  of  whom 


126  FACING  REALITY 

a  superstitious  populace  was  desperately  afraid,  and 
yet  readers  of  old  books  like  Glanvill's  Sadducismus 
TnumpliaUis  will  find  masses  of  sober  evidence,  at- 
tested by  grave  and  educated  persons,  testifying  to 
the  sinister  powers  and  doings  of  these  poor,  helpless 
old  women.  Such  a  power  has  the  human  mind  of 
distorting  the  truth,  once  its  desires  or  fears  are 
engaged ! 

The  reformation  of  thought  imperatively  demanded 
by  the  new  order  of  things  is  that  we  should  be  able 
to  see  and  judge  of  reality  without  the  distorting  in- 
tervention of  our  own  passions.  It  is  for  us  to  think 
hke  men,  and  not  like  brutes  or  idiots.  For  a  com- 
plete idiot  is  one  for  whom  the  outside  world  does 
not  exist  at  all,  who  laughs  and  cries  as  the  fancy 
seizes  him,  and  is  incapable  of  making  such  a  simple 
response  to  fact  as  that  of  getting  his  food  into  his 
mouth. 

And  even  now  the  human  race,  in  the  mass,  is  ac- 
customed to  behave  in  much  the  same  idiotic  way, 
failing  to  adapt  itself  even  to  such  an  obvious  neces- 
sity as  that  of  ending  war,  and  perhaps  calling  to 
God  as  if  to  a  keeper  who  will  preserve  it  from  the 
consequence  of  its  own  misdoing.  For  nothing  less 
than  the  idiocy  of  the  whole  race  is  the  result  of  aU 
its  individuals  thinking  more  or  less  in  a  passion. 

We  have  already  seen  how  this  habit  of  mind  is 
both  the  cause  and  effect  of  the  modern  cult  of  inten- 
sive journalism.  People  take  up  their  morning  paper 
for  the  purpose  not  of  enlightening,  but  of  distorting 
their  minds.     If  it  ceased  to  perform  the  task  of 


THINKING  IN  A  PASSION  127 

sedulously  pandering  to  their  prejudices,  they  would 
cease  to  take  it  in. 

It  is  as  common  a  practice  now  as  it  was  in  Dr. 
Johnson's  time  not  to  let  the  other  "dogs"  have  the 
best  of  it.  If  a  moving  or  plausible  appeal  is  made 
by  one  side,  the  chances  are  that  it  will  either  not  be 
reported  at  all  by  the  other,  or  in  such  careful  selection 
as  to  deprive  it  of  its  sting.  We  have  even  known 
instances  where  members  of  professedly  educated 
families  have  been  accused  of  nothing  less  than  trea- 
son and  radicalism  for  wishing  to  see  the  pronounce- 
ments of  their  opponents  ungarbled. 

It  is  the  well-known  practice  at  political  meetings 
to  prevent  an  unpopular  opponent  from  being  heard 
at  all,  and  only  recently  we  have  had  the  spectacle 
of  Cabinet  Ministers  being  howled  down  at  the  head- 
quarters of  a  party  whose  name,  if  nothing  else,  spells 
freedom,  because  their  own  brand  of  liberalism  was 
a  shade  different  from  that  of  the  more  numerous 
section  of  delegates! 

And  this  habit  of  hostility  to  the  truth,  instead  of 
being  the  enemy  against  which  all  men  of  goodwill 
should  unite  in  striving,  is  deliberately  inculcated, 
often  as  a  first  principle  of  education.  Most  of  us 
have  heard  of  that  egregious  headmaster  who  is  re- 
ported to  have  said  that  he  would  despise  any  boy 
who  did  not  believe  that  his  own  school  was  the  best 
in  the  world,  oblivious  of  the  fact  that  this  is  to  con- 
demn the  vast  majority  of  boys  to  believe  in  a  lie,  and 
also  to  set  up  the  most  effective  of  all  possible  barriers 
to  any  reform  of  the  public  school  system. 


128  FACING  REALITY 

Only  recently  a  boy  of  a  certain  school  recorded 
his  impressions  of  it  in  a  boot  of  some  brilliancy  and 
entire  sincerity,  lifting  the  veil  from  a  small  part  of 
the  filth  and  sordidness  that  loyal  "old  boys"  have  the 
good  taste  to  forget.  For  telling  what  every  one  who 
has  been  through  the  mill  must  have  known  to  be  a 
very  Bowdlerized  version  of  the  truth,  this  "old  boy" 
received  the  degradation  or  compliment,  whichever 
way  he  chose  to  take  it,  of  being  struck  off  the  school 
roll. 

Of  the  business  of  working  up  national  or  racial 
feehng  we  have  never  seen  a  more  thorough-going 
example  than  in  modern  Germany. 

The  German  had  drilled  himself  into  the  belief  that 
he  was  superior  to  other  men.  The  gravest  and  most 
erudite  historians  had  been  turned  on  to  write  up  this 
version  of  the  facts — even  Christ  received  the  honour 
of  Teutonisation — and  not  only  did  the  German  cul- 
tivate all  this  nonsense  for  the  genial  purpose  of  im- 
posing upon  the  rest  of  the  world,  but  he  finally  got 
to  forming  his  own  plans  upon  the  assumption  that 
it  was  true. 

He  embarked  upon  a  war  into  which  he  imagined 
that  England,  and  subsequently  America,  would  not 
dare  to  come,  and  in  which  he  had  only  got  to  put  in 
motion  one  of  the  prepared  schemes  of  his  general 
staff  in  order  to  sweep  victoriously  over  the  French 
armies  and  capital,  and  then  to  polish  off  the  Rus- 
sians at  his  leisure. 

So  blinded  was  he  by  his  habits  of  thought  that  he 
was  capable  of  committing  a  blunder  that  any  intelli- 


THINKING  IN  A  PASSION  129 

gent  cadet  might  have  avoided,  that  of  withdrawing 
two  army  corps  from  the  decisive  wing  at  the  decisive 
moment,  in  order  to  safeguard  every  inch  of  his 
territory. 

Even  in  such  an  apparently  prosaic  matter  as 
finance  this  habit  of  distorting  the  facts  to  suit  one's 
desires  is  rife,  and  that  among  the  most  experienced 
men  of  business.  The  history  of  commercial  panics 
is  that  of  calculation  distorted  by  desire. 

A  wave  of  optimism  sweeps  over  the  business  world 
at  fairly  regular  intervals,  an  extravagant  confidence 
is  lavished  on  all  sorts  of  undertakings,  good  and  bad ; 
the  sun  is  shining,  and  people  invest  upon  the  assump- 
tion that  it  will  always  continue  to  shine.  Then 
comes  the  collapse  of  some  big  concern,  like  Baring's, 
or  Overend  and  Gurney's,  and  a  chill  wave  of  fear 
sweeps  over  the  business  world;  everybody  wants  to 
realise  at  once,  and  failures  become  general. 

A  very  minor  instance  of  the  way  in  which  senti- 
ment colours  business  operations  is  that  afforded  by 
a  recent  issue  of  6  per  cent,  housing  bonds  by  the 
corporations  of  Reading,  Derby,  Gateshead,  Wal- 
lasey, and  Newport.  The  first  three  of  these  issues 
were  heavily  over-subscribed  and  the  fourth  sub- 
scribed in  full,  but  little  more  than  half  of  the  New- 
port issue  was  taken  off  the  hands  of  the  underwriters, 
though  subsequently  the  stock  rose  merrily,  neck  to 
neck  with  the  over-subscribed  Gateshead  and  the  fully 
subscribed  Wallasey. 

The  sole  ostensible  reason  for  this  early  shyness  of 
investors  was  the  sentiment  aroused  against  the  Welsh 


130  FACING  REALITY 

miners  by  the  coal  strike,  which  was  at  its  height 
at  the  time  of  the  issue. 

But  in  what  Darwin  called  the  peaceful  realms  of 
science  we  might  at  least  expect  thought  to  be  im- 
partial and  undistorted  by  passion.  Alas,  anybody 
who  has  had  much  experience  of  an  academic  atmos- 
phere knows  how  far  this  is  from  being  the  case! 
There  is  no  such  hotbed  of  prejudice  and  heresy- 
hunting  as  a  dons'  common-room.  Academic  ortho- 
doxies are  little  heard  of,  because  few  people  are 
capable  of  understanding  the  dogmas  at  issue.  For 
that  very  reason  they  are  more  deeply  rooted  and  im- 
pervious to  fact  than  almost  any  other. 

The  man  who  aspires  to  make  a  living  out  of  the 
practice  of  teaching,  as  most  men  of  science  are  com- 
pelled to  do,  however  little  they  may  be  fitted  for  it, 
soon  finds  that  he  must  perforce  bow  the  knee  in  the 
house  of  whatever  may  be  the  fetish  of  the  hour. 
Otherwise  he  will  not  actively  be  persecuted,  but 
simply  passed  by.  No  one  will  think  of  electing  a 
notoriously  "unsound"  man  to  any  post  or  chair,  and, 
failing  private  means,  he  had  better  find  another  pro- 
fession as  an  alternative  to  starving. 

Truth  never  has  to  fight  a  harder  battle  than  one 
against  entrenched  authority.  When  Darwin  first 
propounded  his  theory  of  the  origin  of  species,  the 
most  distinguished  biologists  of  his  time  closed  their 
minds  obstinately  against  him,  but  when  he,  in  his 
turn,  became  a  fetish  of  orthodoxy,  even  such  a  bril- 
liant critic  as  Samuel  Butler  was  unable  to  obtain  a 
hearing. 


THINKING  IN  A  PASSION  131 

So  in  history.  It  would  be  almost  impossible  now- 
adays for  any  one  to  go  outside  the  limits  of  the  colour- 
less and  soulless  "research"  which  is  commemorated 
in  such  a  monument  of  boredom  as  the  Cambridge 
Modern  History. 

Most  extraordinary  of  all,  custom  and  vested  in- 
terest have  sanctioned  the  dreary  fiction  of  a  number 
of  social  "sciences"  which  are  not  sciences  at  all,  but 
merely  the  disconnected  opinions  of  various  professors 
who  agree  with  each  other  in  no  single  point  except 
as  regards  the  seriousness  with  which  their  political 
or  social  or  economic  science,  whatever  it  is,  ought 
to  be  taken. 

"Truth,"  as  old  Chaucer  said,  "is  put  down." 
Neither  in  Church,  nor  college,  nor  forum,  nor 
market-place  do  men  fix  their  naked  regard  upon  the 
thing  that  is.  As  in  the  court  in  Alice  through  the 
Looking -Glass  J  the  verdict  precedes  the  trial;  they 
know  what  they  want  to  find  and  they  find  it.  "Seek 
and  ye  shall  find"  comes  to  have  quite  an  unexpected 
meaning.  It  is  not  often  that  a  thing  is  sedulously 
looked  for  without  its  turning  up  in  some  form  satis- 
factory to  the  seekers. 

When  what  passed  for  Christianity  became  the 
official  faith  of  the  Caesars,  pious  searchers  were  not 
long  in  discovering  the  three  crosses  on  Calvary,  de- 
spite the  extreme  improbabihty  of  their  having  been 
either  buried  together  or  preserved.  So  when  Sir 
Oliver  Lodge  had  convinced  himself  before  the  war 
that  the  barrier  between  life  and  death  was  on  the 
point  of  being  broken  down,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered 


132  FACING  REALITY 

at  that  he  obtained  veridical  evidence  of  his  son's  sur- 
vival from  the  first  medium  to  whom  he  applied. 

This  does  not  prove  that  good  Empress  Helena 
and  Sir  Oliver  were  wrong  in  their  respective  dis- 
coveries, but  it  does  compel  us  to  examine  these  with 
the  most  suspicious  scrutiny,  on  the  ground  that  what- 
ever the  facts  were,  such  convinced  seekers  were  al- 
most bound  in  the  circumstances  to  arrive  at  the 
results  they  did. 

It  must  not  be  imagined  that  when  we  talk  of  think- 
ing in  a  passion — by  which  we  mean  not  necessarily 
excited  thinking,  but  thought  distorted  by  the  will — 
we  necessarily  imply  that  the  process  of  thought  is 
illogical.  The  worst  fallacies  are  not  those  of  logic, 
and  there  is,  in  fact,  no  such  keen  logician  as  a  com- 
mon type  of  madman.  The  history  of  most  obsessions 
is  that  of  merciless  logic  unrestrained  by  any  sense 
of  proportion. 

A  man  may  be  obsessed  by  the  fear  that  he  has  got 
cancer,  and  all  efforts  to  prove  that  he  has  not  got  it 
breali  down  from  the  sheer  impossibility,  as  he  is  well 
aware,  of  doing  so.  He  may  have  cancer.  The  doc- 
tor may  be  wrong  who  tells  him  that  he  is  quite  sound ; 
the  best  doctors  often  are.  Any  little  pain  or  swell- 
ing may  be  a  symptom;  he  cannot  be  certain,  but  he 
cannot  be  certain  it  is  not.  It  is  the  possibiUty  that 
tickles  his  brain  with  fear. 

And  just  in  the  same  way,  if  we  turn  our  thought 
to  work  without  any  sense  of  proportion,  we  can  make 
a  logical  case  to  defend  practically  anything  we  like. 
And  that  is  what  we  usually  do. 


THINKING  IN  A  PASSION  183 

To  disprove  anything  whatever  is  no  easy  feat. 
Father  WilHam  developed  his  jaw  by  arguing  with 
his  wife,  and  it  is  improbable  that  they  ever  arrived 
at  a  conclusion  satisfactory  to  both.  If  we  want  a 
logical  reason  for  believing  anything,  from  Ultra- 
montanism  to  Bolshevism,  we  shall  have  no  difficulty 
in  finding  it.  We  have  only  to  select  our  premises 
and  let  the  results  follow. 

We  have  heard  kindly  hearted  women,  who  would 
not  hurt  a  fly,  seriously  defending  both  the  divinely 
inspired  authenticity  and  the  morality  of  the  hideous 
and  perhaps  mistranslated  legend  of  the  bald  prophet, 
the  forty-two  chaffing  children,  and  the  two  Gar- 
gantuan she-bears. 

It  was  doubtless  necessary  for  the  prophet  to  assert 
his  divine  authority ;  the  children  may  have  said  other 
and  ruder  things,  and  the  Supreme  Being,  who  is 
usually  dragged  in  as  an  accomplice,  doubtless  had 
good  reasons  which  we  are  not  allowed  to  know.  And 
thus  one  of  the  most  absurd  and  revolting  of  stories 
can  be  defended  by  arguments  that  we  may  despise 
but  cannot  conclusively  refute. 

The  typical  argumentative  woman — and  this  is 
probably  more  a  question  of  education  than  sex — is, 
as  she  often  asserts,  quite  logical,  but  she  uses  the 
weapon  of  logic  in  a  thoroughly  unscrupulous  way. 
Only  a  very  unwise  and  inexperienced  man  will  try 
to  reason  with  her.  The  fault  is  not  with  the  reason- 
ing, but  with  the  premises  on  which  it  is  based.  These 
premises    are — and    this    appHes    to    unscrupulous 


134  FACING  REALITY 

thinkers   of   both    sexes — incomplete    fragments    of 
reality  distorted  by  passion,  or  false  altogether. 

The  real  reason  for  defending  the  bear  story  is  not 
a  noble  enthusiasm  for  the  truth,  but  a  fear  lest  any 
part  of  the  Bible  should  prove  open  to  doubt,  with 
disastrous  consequences  to  faith  and  peace  of  mind. 
Religion,  thus  conceived  of,  is  like  a  card-house,  of 
which  every  card  must  be  kept  in  its  place.  And  thus 
every  result  of  critical  research  will  be  ignored  or 
flatly  denied  and  the  moral  sense  deliberately  blunted 
in  order  to  reach  a  desired  and  edifying  conclusion. 

The  reasoning  by  which  we  are  accustomed  to  con- 
firm whatever  convictions  we  happen  to  hold  already 
is  based  upon  a  similar  process  of  allowing  our  desires 
to  select  the  facts.  An  old-fashioned  Unionist  and  a 
patriotic  Irishman  can  reason  themselves  each  into  a 
fury  of  non-compromise  by  selecting  from  the  woful 
story  of  Ireland,  past  and  present,  only  those  facts 
that  suit  him. 

The  papers  on  one  side  will  have  nothing  but  Crom- 
well, the  penal  laws,  the  '98,  and  the  black  and  tans, 
a  tale  of  ancient  wrongs  daily  renewed,  and  the  other 
will  retort  with  cold-blooded  murders  of  innocent  old 
people,  an  unprovoked  rebellion  in  the  hour  of  crisis, 
and,  if  they  have  more  knowledge  of  history  than  is 
usually  possessed  by  such  disputants,  the  difficulty  of 
coming  to  any  sort  of  understanding  with  such  an 
untractable  and  impossible  person  as  the  Irish  Celt 
has  generally  proved  himself  to  be. 

It  is  the  same  in  the  working  up  of  class  hatred. 
One  side  sees  one  set  of  facts  and  the  opposite  side 


THINKING  IN  A  PASSION  135 

another,  and  these  are  the  only  facts  allowed  to  be 
dwelt  upon  in  their  respective  organs.  The  zealous 
communist  feeds  his  mind  upon  stories  of  sweated 
labour,  of  slums,  and  of  profiteering.  The  other  side 
has  nothing  but  the  bitter  cry  of  the  middle  class, 
strikes  in  time  of  war,  the  meanness  of  the  trades' 
unions  towards  ex-service  men,  and  so  forth.  Each 
side  has  an  excellent  case  against  the  other,  and  that 
is  all  that  it  is  allowed  to  hear.  And  so  a  suicidal 
hatred  is  formed  to  make  Britain  a  house  divided 
against  itself. 

We  have  already  seen  how  easily  nations  are  able 
to  find  grounds  for  hating  each  other,  and  a  hearty 
ill-wiU  is  all  that  is  needed  to  place  John  Bull,  or 
Germania,  or  Uncle  Sam  on  monuments  of  proved 
iniquity  topping  the  clouds. 

But  we  are  paying  too  great  a  compliment  to  cur- 
rent reasoning  by  talking  as  if  it  were  a  mere  matter 
of  selecting  premises  which  are  true  in  themselves. 
Very  often  our  ignorance  or  laziness  is  capable  of 
accepting  a  complete  falsehood  and  then  building  our 
case  upon  it.  For  passion  not  only  picks  and 
chooses  among  the  facts,  but  actually  falsifies  and 
invents. 

Only  recently  a  deliberate  attempt  was  made  to  fan 
class  hatred  by  the  publication  of  some  sensational  and 
melodramatic  nonsense  tracing  most  modern  democ- 
racy to  a  dreadful  Jewish  conspiracy  whose  details 
might  have  strained  the  creduhty  of  a  board-school 
girl  at  a  cinema,  but  was  supposed  to  be  quite  com- 
mensurate with  the  intelhgence  of  the  worthy  folk 


136  FACING  REALITY 

who  visualise  Mr.  Thomas  and  Mr.  Smillie  as  dancing 
the  carmagnole  in  red  caps  in  the  intervals  of  grind- 
ing their  teeth  and  stropping  the  blades  of  guillotines. 

The  principal  document  on  which  this  hair-raising 
theory  was  based  was  proved  to  be  a  clumsy  forgery 
by  the  Russian  secret  poHce,  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
not  one  in  a  thousand  readers  who  were  convinced 
by  the  revelations  were  in  the  least  affected  by  the 
exposure. 

"These  Jews  are  very  cunning,  my  dear,  and  of 
course  they'll  try  to  wriggle  out  of  it.  But  I  am  quite 
sure  it  can  all  be  explained.  You  mustn't  believe 
everything  you  hear — it's  only  encouraging  these 
dreadful  Bolsheviks  to  let  them  think  they  have  got 
the  best  of  it.  And  that  awful  part  about  Hiram 
and  Abiram  and  the  coal  strikers  I  am  absolutely 
certain  is  true." 

But  whether  the  grounds  on  which  we  base  our 
behefs  are  actually  false,  or  merely  part  of  the  truth, 
the  fact  remains  that  hardly  ever,  in  ordinary  hfe, 
does  any  one  attempt,  in  the  noble  phrase  of  Matthew 
Arnold  (who  was  far  from  living  up  to  it)  to  see  life 
steadily  and  see  it  whole. 

Take  up  any  newspaper  or  magazine,  take  down 
the  latest  book  from  your  library  shelves,  and  try  the 
opinions  they  contain  or  the  view  of  life  they  set  forth 
by  the  truth  or  adequacy  of  the  grounds  on  which 
these  are  based. 

Take  a  novel  of  Indian  life,  in  which  the  brown 
men  are  represented  as  ignorant  and  superstitious 
rascals,  without  faith  or  principles,  and  the  whites  as 


THINKING  IN  A  PASSION  137 

strong  and  self-sacrificing  heroes,  patiently  bearing 
the  burden  of  Empire  and  dealing  out  its  benefits  to 
an  ungrateful  and  murderous  race — read  this  and  ask 
yourself  whether  it  is  likely  to  represent  quite  the 
whole  truth  about  Englishmen  and  Indians,  or 
whether  it  may  not  be  mere  unscrupulous  mendacity 
pandering  for  money  to  a  known  prejudice. 

The  next  book  is  perhaps  an  exposure  of  spiritual- 
ism (a  defence  of  it  would  serve  equally  well  as  an 
example)  making  great  merriment  over  the  humbug 
in  which  so  many  mediums  have  been  detected,  talk- 
ing as  if  the  whole  thing  were  either  deliberate  fraud 
or  crass  stupidity,  and  judiciously  slurring  over  any 
inconvenient  evidence  that  is  not  quite  so  easy  to 
explain  away.  You  are  soon  reminded  that  the  sub- 
ject of  hfe  after  death  is  one  in  which  the  passions 
are  so  deeply  engaged  that  a  man  or  woman  who  can 
think  about  it  really  impartially  is  a  phenomenon 
harder  to  believe  in  than  the  most  rackety  ghost. 

You  can  continue  the  process  at  your  leisure,  in 
almost  any  direction — examine  a  carefully  edited 
biography,  any  pohtical  or  social  treatise,  something 
designed  for  the  relief  of  doubt  or  the  discomfitui-e 
of  obscurantists,  an  account  of  Germany  or  anything 
else  as  it  really  is,  a  history  of  Ireland  at  any  period 
bound  in  green  or  red,  or  perhaps  orange,  a  scien- 
tific treatise  going  one  beyond  Darwin  or  resurrecting 
Lamarck  or  booming  or  showing  up  Einstein,  any- 
thing, almost,  that  gets  into  print  or  for  the  matter 
of  that  into  conversation,  and  you  will  not  be  long 


138  FACING  REALITY 

in  discovering  that  the  average  human  mind  does  not 
even  attempt  to  see  or  think  about  reahty,  that  its 
opinions  are  dictated  by  its  passions,  and  the  truth 
has  to  accommodate  itself  thereto. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

MENTAL   INERTIA 

WHEN  we  speak  of  thought  distorted  by  pas- 
sion it  is  perhaps  natural  that  we  should  not 
include  what  is  the  most  insidious  of  all  human  de- 
sires, that  of  avoiding  trouble.  This  is,  in  its  origin, 
a  reasonable  economy.  The  more  simply  we  can  at- 
tain our  ends,  the  more  energy  we  have  left  over  for 
other  purposes. 

One  of  the  most  important  inventions  in  cotton 
spinning  was  made  by  a  boy  who  was  tending  some 
machinery  and  discovered  that  if  he  tied  it  up  in  a 
particular  way  it  would  do  the  same  work  while  he 
sat  kicking  his  heels.  The  bicycle  may  save  for  bet- 
ter things  the  time  that  we  spend  in  walking. 

The  desire  to  avoid  trouble  becomes  a  vice  when 
it  causes  us  not  only  to  curtail  our  means  but  to  sacri- 
fice our  ends.  If  the  boy  inventor  had  risked  smash- 
ing the  machine  altogether  or  had  caused  it  to  turn 
out  worse  yarn,  his  master  might  not  unplausibly 
have  characterised  him  as  a  lazy  young  scamp,  in- 
stead of  paying  him  the  compliment  of  appropriating 
his  invention. 

The  process  of  thought  to  which  every  impression 
is  subjected  before  it  passes  into  action  is  as  fatiguing, 
in  its  way,  as  any  other  sort  of  work.    Anything  that 

139 


140  FACING  REALITY 

can  legitimately  be  done  to  shorten  it  is  an  unqualified 
benefit.  A  mind  trained  to  habits  of  order  will  do 
accurately  and  easily  work  that  would  fatigue  and 
baffle  another. 

It  is  only  when  the  mind  tries  to  save  itself  trouble 
by  doing  bad  work  that  we  can  speak  of  it  as  slovenly. 
It  is  too  easy  to  simplify  thought  by  divorcing  it 
from  the  truth,  by  slurring  over  its  processes  and 
allowing  symbols  to  fill  the  place  of  realities.  And 
when  the  counterfeit  is  as  readily  accepted  as  the 
genuine  product  there  is  an  almost  irresistible  tempta- 
tion to  save  oneself  trouble  by  thinking  dishonestly. 

But  the  desire  to  avoid  fatigue  is  not  the  only  rea- 
son for  slovenly  thinking.  We  have  already  seen  that 
the  object  of  most  thought  at  the  present  day  is  to 
arrive  not  at  the  truth,  but  at  whatever  conclusion 
we  have  fixed  upon  already  as  being  in  harmony  with 
our  own  desires.  It  is  obvious  that  a  correct  or  thor- 
ough process  of  thought  is  the  last  thing  that  is  desir- 
able from  this  point  of  view.  The  more  unscrupulous 
and  arbitrary  we  can  be  about  it  the  more  competent 
we  are  to  work  the  oracle. 

The  young  man  who  wishes  to  be  free  from  doubt 
will  keep  himself  in  pious  ignorance  of  anything  that 
might  weaken  his  faith  and  the  heated  partisan  will 
applaud  every  piece  of  journalistic  clap-trap  that 
tends  to  score  off  the  other  side. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  vicious  simplifica- 
tion of  thought  is  not  only  a  convenience  but  actually 
a  paying  proposition  when  appeahng  to  an  audience 
who  themselves  like  to  be  saved  the  trouble  of  think- 


MENTAL  INERTIA  14.1 

ing.  A  scrupulous  mind  may  be  an  actual  disqualifi- 
cation in  journalism  or  even  literature  of  the  more 
popular  stamp.  Some  agents  will  advise  a  new 
author  to  avoid  "psychology"  in  his  novels,  to  go 
for  a  good  and  melodramatic  plot  and  a  strong  love 
interest,  and  remember  that  Meredith  and  Hardy,  if 
they  had  not  estabhshed  reputations,  would  be  a  drug 
on  the  market. 

A  certain  young  author,  who  had,  as  an  under- 
graduate, doubled  the  sales  of  a  well-known  academic 
magazine  by  sheer  brilhancy  of  editorship,  and  whose 
name  is  now  known  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  country,  started  his  career  as  a  pro- 
fessional journalist  on  the  staif  of  one  of  the  illus- 
trated halfpenny  dailies.  On  arriving  at  the  office, 
he  was  told  to  write  a  paragraph  on  some  subject  or 
other,  and  naturally  did  his  best  to  earn  the  good  opin- 
ion of  his  editor  by  a  crisp  and  concise  piece  of  Eng- 
lish. The  editor,  also  a  university  man,  summoned 
the  new  contributor  to  his  presence. 

"My  dear  fellow,"  he  said,  "this  will  never  do.  This 
might  be  written  for  the  Times.  You  must  really  re- 
member that  you  are  writing  for  a  halfpenny  audi- 
ence. I'm  not  going  to  put  you  on  to  any  other  job 
this  morning.  Just  take  a  copy  of  this  paper,  and 
read  it  from  beginning  to  end.  Then  sit  down  and 
re-write  yom'  paragraph  in  exactly  the  same  style. 
You  won't  be  here  long  before  you  realise  what 
damned  fools  you  have  got  to  write  down  to." 

We  have  seldom  seen  one  of  these  blotchily  illus- 
trated and  vilely  written  organs  flooding  the  book- 


142  FACING  REALITY 

stalls  and  penetrating  the  homes  of  people  supposed 
to  be  educated,  without  thinking  of  that  incident,  and 
realising  that  this  journalese  feast  is,  in  truth,  hog- 
wash  contemptuously  ladled  out  by  men  who  have 
long  ago  found  that  they  can  make  a  living  by  suffer- 
ing fools  gladly. 

The  halfpenny  audience  has  now  become  a  penny 
audience,  but  it  is  no  less  keen  to  have  its  intelligence 
insulted  and  the  worst  possible  trash  thrust  upon  it. 
It  desires  to  be  saved  the  trouble  of  thinking  and  the 
inconvenience  of  seeing  things  as  they  are,  and  the 
supply  meets  the  demand. 

It  is  easy  to  see  what  mischief  is  being  done  by 
sedulous  pandering  to  such  mental  laziness.  The 
complication  of  modern  life  calls  for  a  corresponding 
thoroughness  and  delicacy  of  thought,  and  it  is  the 
object  of  most  people  to  save  themselves,  at  all  costs, 
the  trouble  of  thinking.  There  is  no  more  obvious 
way  of  doing  this  than  simply  to  ignore  the  complex- 
ity of  life,  and  to  make  it  out  to  be  a  much  simpler 
thing  than  it  is.    It  is  as  if  life  were  to  say  to  reality : 

"If  you  will  make  such  extravagant  demands  upon 
me,  that  is  not  my  fault.  I  shall  continue  to  treat 
you  as  if  you  were  reasonable,  and  you  can  do  what 
you  like.  My  reality  is  going  to  be  the  reality  I  want, 
and  can  deal  with." 

To  simplify  reality  by  falsifying  it,  that  is  what  the 
uneducated  and  slovenly  mind  is  perpetually  striving 
to  effect,  that  is  the  first  principle  of  what,  whether 
in  books  or  magazines  or  newspapei*s,  we  designate 
as  journahsm.     There  is  no  better  example  of  this 


MENTAL  INERTIA  143 

tendency  than  that  afforded  by  the  presentment  of 
life  whether  in  print  or  on  the  stage  or  cinema,  that 
we  know  as  melodrama. 

The  average  manual  labourer  or  servant -girl  does 
not  want  his  or  her  brain  bothered  by  the  shades  and 
intricacies  of  character,  they  pay  their  sixpences  to 
relax  their  minds  and  not  to  keep  them  on  the  stretch. 
Life,  as  they  insist  on  having  it  shewn  to  them,  has 
to  be  ordered  according  to  a  fixed  and  unalterable 
convention;  the  people  who  come  on  the  stage  must 
differ  from  those  of  real  life  in  being  so  devoid  of  all 
subtlety  that  their  motives  can  be  understood,  and 
the  action  must  move  in  a  way  so  honoured  by  prece- 
dent and  capable  of  prediction  that  it  can  be  followed 
without  effort. 

In  this  strange  world,  which  those  for  whom  it  is 
created  come  to  regard  as  the  image  of  reality,  every- 
body is  either  very  good  or  very  bad,  except  the  ex- 
clusively comic  characters,  who  are  practically  non- 
moral,  and  who,  to  judge  by  their  lack  of  any  serious 
interests  whatever,  are  born  amid  shrieks  of  laughter 
and  expire  in  the  midst  of  some  Rabelaisian  story  just 
before  coming  to  the  naughty  word. 

The  hero  of  these  romances  is  always  a  person  of 
immaculate  goodness  and  pays  a  delicate  compliment 
to  the  ideals  of  his  audience  by  being  at  once  an  object 
of  unmeasured  admiration  and  such  an  abject  fool  as 
to  be  incapable  of  drawing  even  the  most  obvious 
conclusions. 

His  opponent,  on  the  other  hand,  is  credited  with 
the  deepest  intelligence  which  he  employs  for  the  sole 


144  FACING  REALITY 

and  almost  disinterested  pui'pose  of  doing  evil,  and 
particularly  of  injuring  or  obtaining  possession  of  the 
hero's  affinity,  a  young  woman  of  pronounced  sexual 
attractions,  indecently  innocent,  and  of  a  clinging  im- 
becility surpassing,  if  possible,  that  of  her  destined 
lord,  just  such  a  woman,  in  fact,  as  the  average  male 
spectator  or  reader  would  like  to  obtain  for  liimself. 

A  female  villain  is  probably  added — a  brunette,  for 
melodramatic  virtue  varies  directly  with  the  fairness 
of  the  hair.  The  whole  performance  must  be  ar- 
ranged so  as  to  stimulate  the  sexual  instincts  as  far  as 
possible  under  a  mask  of  immaculate  prudery,  only 
lifted  for  a  moment  to  reveal  the  obscene  leer  of  the 
comic  man. 

That  is  how  those  who  cater  for  the  pubhc  provide 
them  with  amusement,  which  is  at  the  same  time  more 
or  less  instructive  to  them  as  holding  up  a  mirror 
to  Hfe.  But  it  is  necessary  to  approach  them  for  busi- 
ness as  well  as  pleasure,  and  to  impress  upon  their 
imaginations  as  simply  and  crudely  as  possible  what- 
ever version  of  the  facts  is  best  calculated  to  advance 
somebody's  interests. 

Contemplate — as  in  fact  you  will  be  compelled  to 
do  whether  you  like  it  or  no — those  garish  and  pain- 
ful hoardings  that  have  been  called  the  poor  man's 
picture  gallery.  Perhaps  you  will  see  in  flaming  let- 
ters some  such  rhyme  as 

"The  sons  of  the  morning  shout  together 
Mendax  cloth  keeps  out  the  weather'* 


MENTAL  INERTIA  145 

a  simplification  of  the  facts  whose  baldness  you  will 
be  able  to  appreciate  if  you  have  one  of  the  firm's 
Rainex  Truda  overcoats  bunching  round  your  shoul- 
ders and  a  soaking  vest  next  to  your  skin. 

The  next  poster  may  bear  some  such  legend  as 
"Tariff  Reform  means  Starvation,"  a  simplification 
of  economic  theory  that  might  have  made  even 
Richard  Cobden  stare  and  gasp.  Bestial  children, 
who  make  you  long  for  another  Herod  or  Elisha, 
arise  with  goggle  eyes,  clamouring  for  a  tin  of  blanc- 
mange powder.  And — incredible  as  such  a  thing 
might  appear  in  a  Christian  country — the  next  ad- 
vertiser may  be  God  Himself,  perhaps  with  a  warn- 
ing whose  relevance  is  appreciated  by  not  one  of  those 
who  regard  this  maniac  and  insolent  chorus  of  asser- 
tion— "the  wages  of  sin  is  death." 

But  turn  to  the  columns  of  your  newspaper  or 
magazine,  and  you  will  see  what  at  first  sight  seems 
a  message  of  good  tidings.  Here  is  a  firm  that  actually 
professes  to  make  a  complete  reformation  of  any- 
body's mind — for  a  good  round  sum,  it  is  true,  but 
the  labourer  is  worth  of  his  hire.  A  reformation  that 
ought  to  solve  the  problems  of  mankind  once  and 
for  all! 

This  wonderful  system!  There  is  nothing  that  it 
will  not  do,  nothing  that  it  will  not  cure.  It  will  take 
away  lassitude,  inaccuracy,  hesitation,  blushing,  in- 
solvency and  sin  and  give  you  instead  wit,  genius, 
self-assurance,  charm  of  manner,  personal  magnetism, 
virtue  and  above  all  money,  money  that  will  roll  into 
your  pockets  and  make  your  income  go  on  doubling 


146  FACING  REALITY 

and  redoubling  till  a  new  and  improved  version  of  the 
system  comes  out,  and  then  you  can  start  it  trebling. 

With  rare  lucidity  the  unsuspecting  reader  is  con- 
vinced that  in  these  days  of  high  prices  an  increased 
income  is  absolutely  necessary.  And  look  at  these 
curves  and  figures — that  is  what  has  happened  to 
other  people's  incomes  and  what  will  happen  to  yours, 
if  you  only  pay  up  and  take  the  oath  of  secrecy !  We 
will  do  the  rest. 

True,  we  do  not  submit  our  system  to  open  criti- 
cism. In  fact  we  take  every  precaution  against  any 
detail  of  it  getting  out.  We,  dear  pupil,  confide  in 
your  honour.  But  in  case  you  suspect  the  least  de- 
ception you  have  only  to  read  one  of  thousands  of 
testimonials,  some  of  them  by  quite  well-known  peo- 
ple, who  out  of  pure  disinterested  love  of  humanity 
have  begged  us  to  advertise  their  opinions  of  the 
merits  of  our  system. 

All  these  great  and  good  men  and  women,  their 
portraits  appealing  to  you  with  such  guileless  eyes — 
even  Miss  Phyrne  Sangramore,  everybody's  darling, 
that  singularly  generous  young  lady,  who  has  made 
no  secret  of  owing  her  complexion  to  Peachey's  cold 
cream,  her  smile  to  Brushless  Dentifrice  and  her 
agility  to  Bunyan's  corncure,  has  taken  it  up  and 
found  it  too  sweet  for  words,  not  to  speak  of  the 
clergj^man  who  has  attained  fresh  inspiration  for  his 
arduous,  spiritual  duties,  and  a  new  living  more  than 
twice  as  wealthy  as  the  last  with  the  distinct  hope  of 
a  rural  deanery. 

The   facts,  though  voluminous,   are  simple,   and 


MENTAL  INERTIA  147 

simple  faith  is  worth  .  .  .  well,  write  for  a  free  copy 
of  "Wisdom  and  the  Superman,"  a  priceless  book 
in  itself,  and  you  will  see  what  your  simple  faith  is 
worth  to  us. 

This  is  a  common  type  of  advertisement  nowadays, 
the  idea  of  the  secret  mind  system  has  been  taken  up 
by  more  than  one  enterprising  firm,  and  akin  to  it 
are  the  nostrums  of  various  educational  tipsters  who 
will  teach  you  how  to  make  a  fortune  by  your  pen  or 
pencil  or  your  fingers  on  the  piano,  the  idea  being 
always  to  sell  you  printed  matter  at  anything  exceed- 
ing ten  times  its  market  value. 

We  offer  no  criticism  on  the  merits  of  these  sys- 
tems, because  we  should  have  to  pay  more  than  we 
are  prepared  to  do  for  the  privilege  of  inspecting 
them,  and  then  be  bound  in  honour  not  to  criticise 
them.  We  only  mention  them  to  shew  the  extraor- 
dinary'' simplicity  of  a  public  which  can  be  successfully 
appealed  to  by  arguments  so  palpably  unconvincing. 

One  might  imagine  that  firms  whose  business  it 
was  to  inculcate  logical  and  rational  methods  of 
thought  would  refrain  from  basing  their  reputations 
on  grounds  that  the  slightest  reflection  would  shew 
are  neither  more  logical  nor  rational  than  those  of 
other  advertisements,  and  in  one  very  important  re- 
spect carry  even  less  conviction  to  the  reflecting  mind, 
for  the  proprietors  of  pills  and  soap  at  least  do  not  sell 
their  products  in  sealed  packets,  and  then  bind  the 
purchasers  never  to  shew  them  even  to  their  wives. 

So  much  at  the  mercy  of  its  surroundings  is  the 
mind  that  will  not  apply  itself  to  the  labour  of  thought. 


148  FACING  REALITY 

Hamlet  lost  all  patience  with  his  friends,  Rosencrantz 
and  Guildenstern,  because  they  thought  they  could 
play  on  him  as  easily  as  if  he  were  a  pipe,  and  yet  the 
majority  of  us  are  little  better  than  pipes  that  any  one 
can  pick  up  in  the  street  and  play  to  what  tune  he 
likes. 

We  are  incapable  of  helping  ourselves,  either  in- 
dividually or  in  the  mass.  We  have  said  to  reality, 
"depart  from  us  I"  because  we  are  too  lazy  to  receive 
it,  but  what  has  come  to  us  in  its  place  is  Hkely  to 
give  us  more  trouble  than  the  severest  intellectual 
effort.  We  are  hke  soldiers  who  think  it  too  much 
of  a  bother  to  put  on  gas  masks. 

Even  when  we  do  set  ourselves  to  think,  it  is  on 
the  understanding  that  the  whole,  uncongenial  opera- 
tion shall  be  shortened  as  much  as  possible,  by  the 
simple  process  of  never  thinking  twice  about  the  same 
thing.  "First  thoughts,"  such  is  one  of  the  mottoes 
of  journaUsm,  "are  the  only  ones  that  count."  Some 
of  the  most  distinguished  thinkers  of  our  day  owe 
no  small  part  of  their  fame  to  their  facility  in  im- 
pressing readers  with  the  apparent  smartness  of  a 
conclusion  or  epigram,  just  as  a  conjuror  carries  off 
some  palpable  bluff  by  immediately  distracting  the 
attention  of  his  audience.  Men  of  real  genius  have, 
unhappily,  condescended  to  build  up  their  fame  upon 
the  lavish  practice  of  such  legerdemain.  Perhaps  they 
might  retort,  with  some  probability,  that  had  they  not 
done  so  they  would  have  found  no  audience. 

Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  who  is  capable  of  better  things, 
is  unfortunately  one  of  the  worst  offenders  in  this  re- 


MENTAL  INERTIA  149 

spect,  and  is  now  having  to  pay  for  it  by  what  must 
be  the  galling  experience  of  being  lionised  not  as  a 
critic  and  reformer,  but  as  a  mountebank.  We  have 
watched  one  of  his  plays,  a  work  of  poignant  tragedy, 
being  greeted  with  cackles  of  appreciative  laughter 
by  an  audience  of  middle-class  devotees  who  imagine 
that  because  their  G.  B.  S.  is  such  a  funny  fellow,  he 
must  therefore  be  perpetually  grinning  through  a 
horse-collar. 

On  another  occasion  we  remember  hearing  a  roar 
of  laughter  evoked  by  one  of  Mr.  Shaw's  characters, 
evidently  supposed  to  be  a  typical  modern  young 
man,  declaring  with  pompous  indignation  that  he  was 
an  EngHshman  and  would  not  hear  the  Government 
of  his  country  insulted. 

"Such  a  telling  piece  of  satire,"  the  laugh  said  as 
plainly  as  words  could,  "such  a  dig  in  the  ribs  for  the 
English  Pharisee.  Just  the  type  of  young  man  one 
meets  everywhere  nowadays  I" 

It  probably  occurred  to  none  of  these  good  people, 
even  if  it  occurred  to  Mr.  Shaw  himself,  that  in  their 
wildest  adventures  they  had  never  comC  across  a 
youth  capable  of  saying  anything  of  this  kind  except 
in  joke,  and  that  Mr.  Shaw  might  with  just  as  much 
point  and  probabihty  have  made  young  Undershaft 
declare  that  he  would  knock  down  anybody  who  cast 
doubt  upon  the  metaphysics  of  Hegel. 

The  difficulty  of  criticising  work  of  this  sort  lies 
in  the  necessity  of  going  through  it  patiently,  sen- 
tence by  sentence,  and  shewing  in  what  respects  it  is 
untrue  to  fact,  in  what  respects  partial  and  in  what 


150  FACING  REALITY 

illogical.  We  do  not  envy  the  man  who  should  un- 
dertake this  task  for  the  complete  works  of,  let  us  say, 
Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton.  We  are  tempted  to  suppose, 
like  St.  John,  that  the  whole  world  could  not  con- 
tain the  books  that  should  be  written. 

This  gentleman's  kindly  and  humorous  personality, 
his  genuine  if  uneven  poetic  power,  the  occasional 
flashes  of  insight  in  his  prose,  and  his  generous  en- 
thusiasm for  the  oppressed  are  apt  to  bhnd  us  to 
what  we  can  only  describe  as  the  intellectual  bluflP 
that  he  has  raised  to  the  level  of  a  fine  art.  His 
method  of  criticising  a  book  or  writing  a  biography 
is  one  that  ingeniously  evades  the  necessity  of  any 
more  knowledge  of  the  subject  than  that  involved  in 
a  glance  at  an  encyclopaedia  and  one  or  two  useful 
tags  for  quotation. 

His  lives  of  Dickens,  Watts  and  Blake  would  serve, 
with  comparatively  few  alterations,  equally  well  for 
almost  any  novelist,  painter  or  mystical  poet  whose 
biography  is  likely  to  be  marketable.  They  are 
merely  pegs  on  which  to  hang  a  set  of  opinions  with 
which  we  soon  become  familiar,  couched  in  a  form 
of  violent  paradox  which  starts  by  arresting  the  at- 
tention but  which  constant  repetition  soon  reduces 
to  the  level  of  an  irritating  trick. 

And  not  content  with  literature,  Mr.  Chesterton 
has  not  even  shrunk  from  embarking  on  a  history  of 
England,  with  an  equipment  palpably  less  than  that 
of  many  an  intelligent  schoolboy,  but  with  a  flam- 
boyant dogmatism  and  above  all  a  success  with  the 
public  such  as  the  most  erudite  scholar  cannot  rival. 


MENTAL  INERTIA  151 

There  is,  indeed,  little  enough  to  choose,  nowadays, 
between  literature  and  advertisement,  and  the  process 
of  cheapening  thought  for  the  public  is  the  same  in 
principle  whether  in  poster  or  causerie.  And  the  al- 
most universal  admiration  with  which  such  counter- 
feit work  is  boomed  through  the  press,  the  praise  that 
would  be  extravagant  if  applied  to  Matthew  Arnold 
or  Sainte  Beuve,  has  the  effect  of  levelling  all  values, 
of  blunting  the  power  to  distinguish  between  the  false 
and  the  true,  and  of  allowing  both  taste  and  concen- 
tration to  perish  by  atrophy. 

The  desire,  thus  constantly  pandered  to,  to  avoid 
the  trouble  of  thought  grows  by  what  it  feeds  upon 
till  at  last  it  becomes  overmastering.  At  a  time  when 
the  very  salvation  of  mankind  demands  that  thought 
should  be  raised  to  the  level  of  excellence  required 
by  modern  conditions,  there  is  too  much  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  among  professedly  educated  people  the 
standard  has  actually  been  lowered. 

It  is  lamentable  to  go  into  some  old  country  house, 
and  see  the  library,  locked  up  in  glass  cases,  that 
some  former  owner  has  accumulated,  rich  with  hand- 
somely bound  editions  of  the  principal  English  and 
French  and  classical  authors,  and  compare  this  with 
the  present  owner's  library,  consisting  perhaps  of 
James  Braid  on  advanced  golf  and  Jack  Hobbs  on 
advanced  cricket,  with  Ruff's  guide  to  the  Turf,  a 
novel  or  two  by  Baroness  Orczy  or  Miss  Ethel  Dell, 
and  a  few  magazines.  And  you  will  find  that  in  all 
his  vocabulary  of  disparagement  our  host  has  no 
epithet  more  heartily  contemptuous  than  "brainy." 


152  FACING  REALITY 

Every  demand  upon  concentration  is,  in  fact,  being 
as  far  as  possible  eliminated  from  modern  life.  The 
old,  three-volume  novel,  whatever  its  defects,  at  least 
presupposed  a  reader  capable  of  keeping  his  mind  on 
the  same  story  for  more  than  two-hundred  and  fifty 
large-printed  pages. 

The  Victorian  Low-Church  Sunday,  despite  its  im- 
plied insult  to  God  as  the  enemy  of  all  happiness,  was 
based  upon  the  idea  of  devoting  one  whole  day  in 
every  seven  to  a  more  or  less  continuous  devotion  to 
His  service.  The  old  leading  article  was  a  serious 
and  deliberate  appeal  to  a  judge  capable  of  follow- 
ing the  case  without  any  special  effort  to  lighten  his 
task  by  seasoning  it  with  intellectual  spice. 

Everything  nowadays  has  to  be  crisp,  snappy,  ob- 
vious ;  shading  and  delicacy  are  dying  out  for  lack  of 
appreciation;  a  meticulous  accuracy  is  a  bore;  the 
rage  for  a  violent  discord  of  primary  colours  and  jazz 
music  is  only  another  phase  of  a  demand  correspond- 
ing to  that  of  the  besotted  drunkard  for  perpetual 
draughts  of  neat  brandy,  preferably  with  cayenne 
pepper  to  make  it  bite.  Such  a  man,  while  he  sur- 
vives, is  not  the  one  we  should  select  as  a  connoisseur 
of  old  sherry. 

Mental  laziness  is  only  the  negative  form  of  think- 
ing in  a  passion.  But  whether  the  desire  is  to  wrench 
reality  to  our  own  purposes  or  to  save  ourselves  the 
trouble  of  dealing  with  it  at  all,  the  underlying  defect 
is  the  same,  we  allow  our  will  to  distort  our  vision, 
we  are  unable  to  face  the  world  as  it  is,  but  prefer  to 
live  in  a  dream-world  of  our  own  illusions.    But  we 


MENTAL  INERTIA  153 

might  just  as  safely  endeavour  to  stroll  across  the 
road  at  Blackfriars  with  our  eyes  shut  and  pretend 
that  it  is  a  country  field. 

If  we  want  to  live  in  the  world  of  our  dreams,  we 
must  take  reahty  itself  and  make  it  conform  to  our 
will.  We  must  avoid  the  fatal  and  lazy  substitute  of 
ignoring  realitj^  and  making  believe  that  what  we 
want  has  come  already  because  we  want  it.  For 
reality  is  like  the  djinn  in  the  fable,  which  will  prove 
an  all  powerful  slave  if  summoned  by  the  appropriate 
spell,  but  which  will  strike  dead  him  who  succeeds  in 
calling  it  up  without  having  mastered  the  secret  of 
control. 

"If  thine  eye  be  single,"  it  has  been  said,  "thy  whole 
body  shall  be  full  of  light,"  and  it  is  to  cultivate  this 
single  eye  for  reality  that  our  efforts  should  be  di- 
rected. 

It  is  the  eye  of  the  poet,  the  only  man  who  sees 
the  flower  and  the  sunrise  simply  as  they  are,  and 
not  clouded  by  custom  and  desire;  it  is  the  eye  of  the 
Russian  novelist,  whose  characters  amaze  you  by  the 
sheer  innocence  of  their  presentation,  so  that  you  are 
moved  to  say,  "this  extraordinary  man  is  actually 
writing  in  a  book  about  real  people";  it  is  the  eye  of 
the  scientist,  who,  instead  of  seeing  an  ordinary  apple 
tumbhng  in  the  usual  way,  observes  a  small,  solid  ob- 
ject, suddenly  released,  approaching  the  earth  with  a 
constantly  increasing  speed,  and  wants  to  know  why; 
it  is  the  attitude  of  one  who,  on  hearing,  not  so  long 
ago,  of  a  priest  of  God  telling  a  poor,  old,  paralysed 
woman  in  the  workhouse  that  she  was  there  because 


154  FACING  REALITY 

she  was  too  independent,  saw,  with  horror,  Antichrist 
standing  where  he  ought  not,  and  wondered  whether 
the  verj^  earth  would  gape  at  our  complacency  or 
whether  God  was  asleep. 

The  message  of  every  saviour  and  seer  has  been 
monotonous  in  its  very  simplicity.  Flee  from  the 
thing  that  is  not,  seek  and  cleave  to  the  thing  that  is. 

What  broke  the  gi-eat  heart  of  Christ  was  not  the 
open  villainy  of  melodrama,  not  the  sin  that  flaunts 
itself  in  the  light  of  day — ^that,  with  an  infinite  under- 
standing, He  could  pity  and  forget — it  was  the  sol- 
emn make-believe  of  virtue,  the  robed  and  dignified 
Pharisee  calmly  acknowledging  the  salutations  of 
passers  by  in  the  street,  the  grave  and  respected  men 
of  business  in  the  outer  courts,  the  erudite  scribes  and 
lawyers,  and  above  all  the  spectacle  of  the  City  of 
Holy  Counterfeit  crowned  by  its  Temple  of  Un- 
reality. 

"Ye  serpents,"  He  cried,  striving  passionately  for 
words  to  express  the  extremity  of  His  indignation, 
"ye  generation  of  vipers,  how  can  ye  escape  the  wrath 
of  Hell!" 

It  was  essentially  the  same  message  as  a  quaint  and 
ugly  old  man  had  preached,  with  quiet  persistency, 
to  the  citizens  of  an  Athens  that  was  already  fast  on 
the  decline.  "Don't  take  anything  for  granted,"  that 
was  the  gist  of  it,  "examine  your  knowledge,  your 
morality,  even  your  religion  to  see  that  you  are  deal- 
ing with  the  thing  that  is  and  not  only  with  words 
and  formulas.  Make  your  ignorance  the  basis  of  your 
knowledge."    For  that  the  respectable  people  of  his 


MENTAL  INERTIA  155 

day  poisoned  at  the  same  draught  the  body  of  Socrates 
and  their  own  souls. 

"Prove  all  things,"  was  the  counsel  of  Paul,  "hold 
fast  that  which  is  good."  And  the  Buddha,  the  en- 
lightened one,  merely  counselled  the  men  of  ritual 
and  formula  to  rend  their  hearts  and  not  their  gar- 
ments, and  to  turn  back  from  illusion  to  reality. 


CHAPTER  IX 

CREATIVE  ART  AND  REALITY 

THERE  is  one  branch  of  human  activity  to  which 
it  might  at  first  be  supposed  that  the  cult  of  real- 
ity has  no  apphcation.  The  veiy  function  of  art — it 
may  be  said — is  to  build  up  a  dream  world  of  its  own, 
to  escape  out  of  reality  altogether.  No  doubt  there  is 
an  element  of  truth  in  this,  though  less  than  some 
modem  definitions,  of  art  would  lead  us  to  suppose. 

The  cult  of  escaping  from  reality  has  only  become 
popular  with  artists  when  the  ugliness  or  shame  of 
things  as  they  are  has  driven  the  artist  to  despair  of 
them.  Walter  Pater  was  a  critic  of  his  age  most  of 
all  when  he  wanted  to  shrink  away  from  it  into  a 
cloistral  Epicureanism. 

If  the  convenience  of  historians  had  not  lightened 
their  educational  requirements  by  narrowing  their 
subject  to  manageable  limits,  it  would  long  ago  have 
been  discovered  that  the  art  of  an  age,  including  its 
Hterature,  is  the  master  key  to  its  development.  It 
is  the  poet,  in  the  old  Greek  sense  of  "The  maker," 
who  gives  form  to  what  every  age  is  trying  to  express. 

To  say  that  the  Puritan  army  won  the  battle  of 
Naseby  is  little  more  than  to  say  that  one  party  of 
men  chased  another  party,  a  httle  more  than  half  its 

156 


CREATIVE  ART  AND  REALITY    157 

size,  off  a  big  field.  But  to  read  the  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress is  to  have  Puritanism  before  your  eyes  and  to 
take  it  into  your  very  soul.  And  if  you  want  to  know 
how  the  enslavement  of  Italy  and  the  clouding  of  her 
Renaissance  appeared  to  the  greatest  of  all  Italian 
patriots,  spend  an  hour  among  the  Medici  tombs  at 
Florence  and  let  your  soul  be  wrung  with  the  strong 
despair  of  Michelangelo. 

The  artist  cannot  escape  from  reality,  even  if  he 
tries.  Oscar  Wilde  tried  to  do  so,  and  yet  the  future 
historian,  if  he  is  wise,  will  understand  more  about 
the  essential  'eighties  from  the  "Sphinx,"  than  from 
the  occupation  of  Egypt  and  the  split  in  the  Liberal 
party. 

It  is  no  doubt  the  last  resort  of  Philistinism  to 
endeavour  to  limit  the  freedom  of  the  artist  by  turning 
him  into  a  preacher,  or  to  make  him  submit  to  any 
other  laws  than  those  of  the  medium  through  which 
he  chooses  to  express  himself.  Mr.  de  la  Mare  would 
be  false  to  himself  were  he  to  come  out  of  his  world 
of  twilight  fancies  and  it  would  be  the  height  of  ab- 
surdity to  expect  a  Picasso  to  compete  with  a  Watts 
in  the  direct  criticism  of  contemporary^^  life. 

If  an  artist  expresses  his  age  it  will  be  in  spite  of 
himself;  he  is  more  likely  than  not  to  do  himself  vio- 
lence by  addressing  himself  to  the  task  directly.  The 
novelist  who  writes  to  punish  vice  and  reward  virtue 
outrages  morality  in  the  very  act  of  defending  it  and 
lies  in  the  name  of  truth. 

Wagner  never  lost  more  time  than  when  he  was  try- 
ing to  force  music  into  an  unnatural  thraldom  to 


158  FACING  REALITY 

metaphysics.  The  artist  is  most  the  interpreter  of 
life  when  he  is  most  true  to  himself  and  his  inspiration. 

With  the  reality  of  the  outside  world  he  is  only  con- 
cerned in  an  indirect  and  secondary  way.  That 
reality  he  may  fashion  to  his  desire  with  as  little 
scruple  as  the  vilest  hack  of  commerce  or  journalism, 
it  all  depends  upon  how  far  the  nature  of  his  under- 
taking binds  him  to  external  fact — the  realistic  novel- 
ist who  described  unreal  men  and  women  would  be 
false  to  his  art. 

But  the  first  and  great  commandment  of  the  artist 
is  to  express  the  inner  and  spiritual  reality  of  life 
itself,  life  that  stands  confronting  that  other  reality 
of  the  outside  world,  and  needs  to  be  raised  to  its 
highest  level  of  perfection  in  order  to  sustain  the  en- 
counter. That  is  what  we  mean  when  we  say  that 
art  thrives  as  it  is  true  to  reality. 

The  importance  of  art  is  now  manifest.  It  is  the 
truest  and  noblest  expression  of  life.  It  holds  up  not 
a  mirror  but  an  ideal,  it  points  the  way  to  what  every 
one  in  his  best  moments  is  striving  to  attain.  It  is 
with  a  true  instinct  that  men  have  lavished  their 
brightest  powers  upon  the  creation  of  their  gods. 

The  figures  chiselled  upon  the  frieze  of  the  Par- 
thenon or  painted  on  the  roof  of  the  Sistine  Chapel, 
the  dancing  Sivas  and  preaching  Buddhas,  are  but 
the  soul  of  the  artist  striving  to  have  life  and  to  have 
it  more  abundantly.  They  are  a  call  to  the  beholders 
to  awaken  out  of  sleep,  to  raise  life  to  a  divine  level, 
even  if  it  be  out  of  a  swinish  contentment  into  tragedy. 

Thus  the  truth  of  an  artist  to  reahty,  his  own 


CREATIVE  ART  AND  REALITY    159 

reality,  constitutes  a  duty  as  solemn  as  ever  lay  upon 
statesman  or  soldier.  If  he  should  fail,  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  life  goes  down  with  him.  His  is  the 
highest  freedom,  freedom  that  is  perfect  service  not 
to  man,  but  to  what,  if  the  term  be  ever  allowable,  we 
must  designate  as  God. 

He  can  only  fail  by  allowing  himself  to  be  made  a 
slave,  a  spiritual  prostitute  more  to  be  despised  than 
the  poor  Magdalenes  of  the  streets,  for  to  whom  much 
is  given,  of  him  shall  much  be  required.  And  when- 
ever there  is  a  tendency  to  flee  from  reality,  it  is  sure 
to  be  reflected  by  the  insincerity  and  prostitution  of 
contemporary  art. 

That  which  deflects  the  creative  genius  from  the 
attainment  of  spiritual  reality  is  the  same  as  that 
which  debars  us  from  appreciating  the  facts  of  the 
outside  world.  We  allow  our  vision  to  be  deflected 
by  our  will,  whether  we  make  our  art  the  slave  of  our 
passions,  in  the  positive  sense,  or  merely  of  our  nega- 
tive desire  for  saving  ourselves  trouble. 

The  most  common  and  vulgar  passion  of  all  is  that 
of  making  money,  and  as  artists  are  usuaUy  poor  peo- 
ple without  even  the  time  for  making  themselves  a 
living  outside  of  their  art,  it  is  apt  to  prove  an  in- 
sidious and  daily  temptation. 

Never  has  there  been  a  greater  peril  than  now  of 
the  muse  being  degraded  into  the  paid  harlot  of 
Mammon.  The  tyranny  of  the  old  patron  was  often 
bad  enough  and  involved  an  endless,  though  extra- 
neous and  conventional  sycophancy.  But  the  patron 
had  at  least  a  soul  and  sometimes  if  he  were  a  Lorenzo 


160  FACING  REALITY 

de  Medici  or  Duke  of  Weimar,  a  soul  equal  to  his 
high  calling. 

But  the  impersonal  tyranny  of  commerce  has 
neither  soul  nor  conscience.  It  has  no  other  standard 
of  artistic  merit  than  that  of  pounds,  shillings  and 
pence.  A  good  book  is  the  best  seller,  a  good  picture 
that  wliich  attracts  the  richest  buyer.  The  only  quali- 
ties that  give  value  to  a  work  of  art  are  those  which 
create  what  economists  know  as  the  maximum,  effec- 
tive demand. 

It  is  not  likely,  however,  that  money  will  have  it 
all  its  own  way.  As  long  as  there  is  any  nobility  in 
man,  it  will  strive  to  express  itself  at  all  costs,  and 
there  are  men  who  would  rather  die  in  a  garret  than 
sell  the  key  of  their  souls.  But  until  the  artist  be- 
comes a  creature  who  can  live  on  air,  and  despise  not 
only  physical  privation  for  himself  and  those  depen- 
dent on  him,  but  what  is  even  more  rare,  that  fame 
which  has  always  been  the  spur  and  infirmity  of  noble 
minds,  he  will  find  himself  pitted  against  an  almost 
irresistible  force  striving  to  divert  him  from  his  true 
goal. 

The  high  austerity  which  regards  the  plaudits  of 
the  crowd  with  suspicion  as  affording  a  presumption 
of  bad  work  is  not  too  common  even  in  the  greatest. 
And  the  commercial  spirit  appeals  not  only  by  terror 
but  even  more  by  persuasion. 

It  is  as  if  Mammon  were  to  take  the  artist  to  a  high 
place,  and  offer  him  all  the  sweets  of  fame  and  the 
delights  of  riches  if  he  will  only  fall  down  and  worship 
him.    And  the  service  he  asks  is  often,  in  seeming, 


CREATIVE  ART  AND  REALITY    161 

so  innocent  and  straightforward  that  it  is  only  too 
easy  for  the  artist  to  beheve  that  he  is  selhng  himself 
for  sheer  love  and  that  the  money  is  merely  an  addi- 
tional advantage  thrown  in. 

For  in  the  higher  grades  of  art,  the  sale  is  seldom 
acknowledged  on  either  side  for  what  it  is.  The  fash- 
ionable novelist,  poet,  painter,  musician  is  as  respected 
as  he  is  prosperous.  His  opinion  is  listened  to  with 
respect,  his  advice  publicly  sought  on  every  sort  of 
trivial  and  impertinent  question,  his  private  life 
dragged  into  an  indecent  but  flattering  publicity. 

So  established  a  thing  is  his  reputation  that  it  is 
more  than  an  ordinary  reviewer's  post  is  worth  to 
criticise  anything  that  he  says  in  a  way  calculated  to 
diminish  it.  To  all  outward  seeming,  never  did  the 
artist  enjoy  such  power  and  freedom  as  to-day.  But 
to  what  end  when,  silently  and  unperceived,  the 
shameful  bargain  has  been  completed  and  the  soul  lies 
fast  and  frozen  in  the  lowest  of  the  nine  circles,  that 
is  the  portion  of  traitors?  We  do  but  hang  our  gar- 
lands on  a  tomb. 

The  art  of  the  spiritual  procurer  has  been  carried 
to  a  rare  degree  of  perfection.  It  is  never  his  busi- 
ness to  frighten  the  victim,  to  confront  him  with  the 
direct  challenge  of  the  Tishbite,  "if  the  Lord  be  God, 
follow  him:  but  if  Baal,  then  follow  him."  The  artist 
is  to  be  tempted  in  the  very  name  of  his  art.  To  take 
one  of  the  most  common  devices  of  all,  he  is  persuaded 
to  sacrifice  the  free  spiritual  energy  that  procured 
him  his  first  success,  and  instead  of  creating,  go  on 


162  FACING  REALITY 

repeating  himself.  For  the  pubhc  likes  to  know 
where  it  is  with  its  favourites. 

If,  let  us  say,  the  popular  and  respectably  passion- 
ate Miss  Rahab  Chepe  were  to  face  the  solution  of 
some  subtle  spiritual  problem  such  as  might  engage 
the  attention  of  Mr.  Joseph  Conrad,  it  is  likely  that 
the  not  inconsiderable  circle  of  her  customers  would 
feel  themselves  basely  swindled,  and  there  would  be 
a  sensational  slump  in  the  market  for  her  books. 

Or  let  us  suppose  that  Mr.  Kipling,  after  writing 
his  first  excellent  stories,  had  been  moved  by  the  spirit 
— and  his  is  a  genius  to  which  it  would  be  dangerous 
to  fix  limits — to  see  British  imperialism  and  Indian 
civihsation  from  the  standpoint  of  a  patriotic  Hindu. 
It  is  not  improbable  that  he  would  have  damaged  his 
reputation  and  lost  many  of  his  readers,  but  he  would 
have  kept  his  own  soul.  As  it  is,  the  nearest  to  it  he 
could  or  would  approach  was  in  Kim,  which  was  writ- 
ten with  all  the  tolerant  patronage  of  the  Greater 
Breed,  and  in  which  the  most  attractive  "outsider"  is 
not  an  Indian  at  all,  but  a  Thibetan  Buddhist,  a  dear, 
harmless  old  creature. 

But  it  is  the  nature  of  inspiration  never  to  stand 
still.  The  artist  moves  through  a  perpetual  series  of 
fresh  creations.  To  him  repetition  is  death,  and  it 
is  both  his  glory  and  his  burden  that  with  every  fresh 
work  of  art  the  work  of  creation  has  to  begin  anew. 
And  the  effort  of  fresh  creation  calls  for  a  correspond- 
ing effort  in  the  beholder.  He  too  has  to  revise  his 
standards,  to  address  his  brain  to  a  wholly  new  task 
of  appreciation.     Indeed,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 


CREATIVE  ART  AND  REALITY    163 

that  nobody  can  receive  a  work  of  genius  without 
creating  it  again  in  his  own  mind. 

This  is  just  what  the  average  member  of  the  pubhc 
hates  to  do.  He  does  not  want  to  be  set  tasks  by  his 
own  servants,  and  as  such  he  regards  the  artist.  When 
he  takes  out  a  novel  by  Mr.  W.  J.  Locke  or  has  his 
wife's  portrait  painted  by  Mr.  Shannon  *  or  goes  to 
hear  a  composition  by  Sir  Edward  Elgar  he  knows 
what  he  is  paying  his  money  for,  and  would  be  as 
much  annoyed  if  he  were  to  get  anj'ihing  else  as  if 
his  clergyanan  were  suddenly  to  announce  from  the 
pulpit  that  the  days  of  religion  were  over,  and  then 
proceed  to  fox-trot  down  the  aisle  with  the  curate. 

For  the  artist,  if  he  is  to  cater  for  the  pubHc,  must 
so  conform  his  art  as  to  consult  the  greatest  happi- 
ness of  the  greatest  number.  And  the  average  mem- 
ber of  the  public  likes  to  think  in  a  world,  not  of 
reality,  but  of  simple  and  convenient  symbols.  It 
will  suit  him  best  if  the  caterer  to  his  aesthetic  tastes 
is  himself  a  symbolic  figure,  who  will  not  startle  him 
by  behaving  in  an  unexpected  way.  The  process  of 
boiling  down  the  man  to  the  symbol  is  called  creating 
a  personality,  and  it  is  one  in  which  the  artist  himself 
is  often  only  too  ready  to  lend  a  hand. 

The  first  thing  necessary  is  to  have  or  cultivate  or 
pretend  to  some  characteristic,  simple  and  easy  to  re- 
member. An  unkempt  and  revolutionary  appear- 
ance may  do  well  enough,  and  even  in  what  are  some- 
times known  as  "belles  lettres"  sheer  corpulence  may 
carry  a  weight  not  measurable  in  avoirdupois. 

*  Now  Sir  Charles  Shannon. 


164  FACING  REALITY 

If  you  are  a  golf  professional,  and  a  bit  of  a  char- 
acter already,  you  will  be  instructed  that  it  is  better, 
even  on  the  title  page,  to  alter  your  Christian  name 
to  its  familiar  nickname.  If  you  are  a  foreigner,  a 
judiciously  broken  English  may  work  marvels. 

We  remember  a  Japanese  artist,  not  without  a  cer- 
tain frail  charm  of  colouring,  who  made  a  reputation 
by  writing  just  the  sort  of  childish  patter  you  would 
expect  from  the  little  toy  men  and  women  that  the 
English  public,  despite  the  war  with  Russia,  still  half- 
beheved  the  Japanese  nation  to  consist  of.  The  very 
title  of  one  of  his  books  was  My  Ideated  John 
Bvllesses,  which  he  must  have  known  to  be  incorrect, 
and  yet  no  doubt  was  quite  right  in  adopting  from 
the  commercial  point  of  view. 

But  even  if  the  artist  refuses  to  be  party  to  these 
crude  methods  of  advertisement,  the  art  of  puffing  a 
personahty  is  sure  to  be  well  enough  understood  by 
those  who  have  the  office  of  marketing  his  works. 
He  must  be  labelled  with  power,  or  subtlety,  or  bold- 
ness (usually  a  synonym  for  prurience),  or  charm,  or 
a  peculiarly  intimate  appeal,  and  on  these  lines  he 
must  be  run  for  all  he  is  worth.  And  we  may  reckon 
on  a  willing  co-operation  on  the  part  of  the  critics. 

It  is  easier  to  review  a  book  without  cutting  it  if 
we  know  already  what  we  are  expected  to  say  about 
the  author.  "How  often,"  remarks  Mr.  J.  C.  Squire, 
"have  the  really  great  passages  of  a  book  I  have 
handled  been  hermetically  sealed" — he  means  uncut — 
"whilst  I  have  misjudged  the  author  by  more  acces- 
sible banahties." 


CREATIVE  ART  AND  REALITY    165 

Thus,  if  you  have  to  review  Mr.  Chesterton,  you 
must  not  fail  to  comment  upon  the  real  seriousness 
of  the  philosophy  that  underlies  his  apparent  flip- 
pancy, you  may  gently  point  out  that  his  way  of 
stating  his  views  is  a  little  too  one-sided  to  be  perfect, 
but  you  must  not  fail  to  imply  that  the  faults  are  all 
on  the  surface  and  that  the  depths  beneath  are  so 
profound  as  to  be  practically  bottomless. 

For  Mr.  W.  J.  Locke  sparkling  charm  is  the 
obvious  lead,  for  Miss  Rose  Macaulay  an  almost 
demonic  cleverness,  for  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  a  minute 
observation  of  human  nature  and  for  the  poet  laureate 
a  muse  whose  scholarly  inspiration  will  be  precious 
to  all  true  lovers  of  verse.  To  proceed  on  these  lines 
is  safe  and  easy,  to  depart  from  them  involves  not 
only  much  unnecessary  labour  but  also  trouble  with 
editors. 

One  result  of  this  commercialising  of  art  is  the  utter 
confusion  of  all  values.  There  is  no  standard  of 
criticism,  not  even  a  bad  standard,  such  as  that  which 
prompted  the  brutalities  of  the  old  Quarterlies  and 
Blackwoods. 

When  the  Quarterly  was  attacking  Keats  or  the 
Edinburgh  pronouncing  that  the  Excursion  would 
never  do,  they  were  at  least  putting  an  intelhgible  case 
from  their  own  point  of  view.  Their  hterary  stand- 
ards, however  bigoted  and  perverse,  were  not  dic- 
tated primarily  by  commercial  motives.  It  is  a  rare 
thing  to  find,  nowadays,  any  standard  of  criticism 
whatever. 

There  are  two  classes  of  authors,  those  who  have 


166  FACING  REALITY 

arrived  and  those  who  have  not  arrived,  the  former 
a  valuable  commercial  asset  and  to  be  respected 
accordingly,  the  latter  to  be  disposed  of  at  the  usually 
good-natured  caprice  of  the  critic. 

We  remember  reading  two  simultaneous  reviews 
of  the  same  book  in  organs  of  high  repute,  one  brand- 
ing it  with  violence  and  indecency,  the  other  saying 
that  it  was  evidently  written  to  satisfy  the  cravings 
of  emotional  curates.  No  wonder,  must  have  been  the 
author's  first  reflection,  that  they  talk  of  disestab- 
lishing the  Church! 

The  attitude  prescribed  for  the  safe  and  elderly 
arbiters  of  excellence  who,  having  achieved  a  reputa- 
tion and  income,  are  no  longer  compelled  to  labour  at 
their  own  personalities,  is  what  may  best  be  described 
as  that  of  the  amiable  highbrow. 

Anybody,  past  or  present,  who  has  a  name,  is  a 
safe  person  to  write  up,  anybody  who  breathes  upon 
his  fame  can  be  swept  away  with  all  the  sleek  scorn 
of  the  butler  for  the  Bolshevik,  and  it  is  preferable 
if  we  can  find  a  minor  classic  a  little  out  of  the  beaten 
track,  in  order  to  emphasise  our  own  superiority. 
Moreover  it  is  an  article  of  faith  that  failure  to  appre- 
ciate any  French  author  and,  above  all,  any  French 
painter,  stamps  the  PhiHstine  at  once. 

The  changes  can  be  easily  and  voluminously  rung 
upon  such  titles  as  "The  countryside  of  Crabbe," 
"Stevenson  as  critic,"  "The  Tahiti  of  Gauguin," 
"Bloomfield,  the  farm  boy  poet,"  and  "Slugs  in 
English  literature."  Even  if  three  or  more  columns 
on  any  one  of  these  subjects  may  be  heavy  to  digest, 


CREATIVE  ART  AND  REALITY    167 

their  mere  presence  on  study  or  drawing-room  table 
imparts  a  sense  of  culture  and  security  that  can  hardly 
be  over-estimated. 

Corresponding  to  this  type  of  insincere  criticism  is 
the  type  of  uninspired  art  which,  in  England  at  any 
rate,  we  can  best  designate  as  academic.  Where  the 
standard  of  taste  is  low,  anything  pretending  to  be 
specially  cultured  is  likely  to  pass  muster,  however 
dull  and  tame  it  may  be  in  reality,  with  critics 
who  have  no  motive  to  give  themselves  away  by 
leaving  unappreciated  the  things  that  ought  to  be 
appreciated. 

There  is  one  poet  in  particular,  of  lovable  person- 
ality and  distinguished  scholarship,  who  happens 
seldom  to  have  written  a  line  in  all  his  voluminous 
works  betraying  more  than  a  Laodicean  talent,  and 
has,  in  fact,  made  a  specialty  of  writing  metrical  exer- 
cises of  a  correct  and  unvarying  docility,  but  of  whom 
it  is  customary  to  speak  in  necessarily  vague  terms 
as  if  he  were,  by  general  consent,  fit  to  occupy  the 
place  of  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson,  and  without  a 
generous  sprinkling  of  whose  lyrics  no  modern  an- 
thology would  be  complete. 

Another,  hardly  less  famous,  has  swollen  his 
achievement  to  three  collected  volumes  by  a  simple 
trick  of  jingle,  vaguely  reminiscent  of  a  piano  organ 
two  or  three  streets  away,  a  meaningless  if  not  wholly 
unpleasing  noise. 

The  Royal  Academy  itself,  that  temple  of  medioc- 
rity and  genius  that  has  earned  its  recognition  by 
ceasing  to  create,  with  its  open  adoration  of  rank  and 


168  FACING  REALITY 

money  and  its  appeal  to  those  instincts  which  are 
satisfied  by  the  Christmas  supplements  of  magazines, 
has  too  long  been  the  target  of  irreverent  comment  to 
leave  anything  fresh  to  say  about  it,  except  that 
despite  its  now  established  and  mienviable  reputation 
it  continues  to  dominate  our  national  art  with  as  pon- 
derous a  dignity  as  the  Duke  of  York's  monument 
looks  over  the  Horse  Guards'  Parade. 

It  has,  in  fact,  become  so  much  of  a  vested  interest 
that  a  recent  attempt  to  reform  it  by  excluding  certain 
worthy  old  stagers  in  favour  of  some  younger  and 
more  modern  artists,  called  forth  a  righteously  in- 
dignant protest  from  one  of  the  most  inveterate 
academicians,  who  claimed  for  these  devotees 
of  the  muse  the  right  of  perpetual  unchallenged 
representation. 

After  all,  what  does  it  matter?  Has  not  the  muses' 
bower  become  the  same  thing  as  Liberty  Hall?  Why 
draw  an  invidious  distinction  between  one  piece  of 
canvas  and  another? 

The  evil  produced  by  such  anarchic  orthodoxy  is 
by  no  means  confined  to  those  who  acknowledge  it. 
It  engenders,  by  reaction,  a  convention  of  heresy 
equally  anarchic  in  principle.  The  desire  for  some- 
thing new  and  the  characteristically  modern  itch  to 
be  ahead  of  the  age  join  hands  with  the  honourable 
distaste  for  pretence  and  mediocrity  in  creating  a 
demand  which  makes  heresy  a  marketable  proposi- 
tion. 

Here,  of  course,  the  commercial  motive  steps  in 
again.    If  you  are  going  to  run  a  heretic  of  any  kind, 


CREATIVE  ART  AND  REALITY   169 

it  is  best  that  he  should  be  one  of  the  most  orthodox 
brand,  that  is  to  say,  he  must  be  very  crude,  very 
bouncing,  and  must  move  on  hues  that  the  intelHgent 
pubhc  knows  already  and  the  critic  who  says  "I"  and 
not  "we"  is  accustomed  to  approve. 

The  market  for  heresy  is  naturally  not  so  large  as 
for  that  which  is  frankly  conventional,  but  it  is  con- 
siderable enough  to  be  worth  catering  for.  It  is,  for 
most  practical  purposes  of  calculation,  confined  to  the 
upper  middle  class  in  the  more  genteel  suburbs. 

We  have  already  seen  how  the  boredom  and  futility 
of  a  jeriy-built  existence  engenders  in  the  more  intel- 
ligent minority  of  its  victims,  and  particularly  among 
the  women,  a  passion  for  escape  and  rebellion.  Such 
a  young  woman  was  drawn  with  great  skill  by  Mr. 
Wells  in  his  Ann  Veronica. 

Those  who  have  investigated  the  conditions  of  life 
in  such  areas  as  Hampstead,  will  know  that  they  are 
quite  thickly  dotted  about  with  httle  clubs  and  cliques, 
representing  the  intellectual  fashion  of  the  hour. 
These  are  numerous  and  affluent  enough  to  make  it 
worth  while  stoking  up  their  enthusiasm  by  a  constant 
supply  of  mystic,  Celtic,  Buddhist,  imagist,  vorticist, 
higher  thoughtful  and  other  suitable  material. 

As  genius  must  find  some  sort  of  an  outlet,  a  sur- 
prising amount  of  really  good  work  slips  in  with  the 
rest,  almost  unperceived,  in  spite  of  conditions  which 
encourage  nothing  so  much  as  a  cheap  trick  of  adver- 
tisement. 

Examine  closely  the  most  approved  modern  poetry, 
and  you  will  find  a  greater  resemblance  than  you 


170  FACING  REALITY 

would  have  expected  between  the  Georgian  conven- 
tions of  the  eighteenth  and  twentieth  centuries,  despite 
the  fact  that  the  former  was  consciously  orthodox  and 
the  latter  is  nothing  if  not  advanced  and  youthful,  and 
not  forgetting  that  the  great  names  of  Brooke,  Fleck- 
er, and  Mr.  Masefield,  as  well  as  those  of  Mr.  Davies, 
Mr.  de  la  Mare,  Mr.  Hodgson  and  Mr.  Sassoon  have 
been  associated  with  our  own  Georgian  clique,  nor  that 
a  high  standard  of  craftsmanship  has  been  set  under 
its  auspices. 

But  with  each  successive  issue  of  a  Georgian 
anthology  the  convention  becomes  more  tyrannous, 
and  the  songcraft  more  closely  allied  to  the  work  of 
reproducing  goods  to  standard.  Just  as  the  conven- 
tion of  the  eighteenth  century  may  be  said  to  be  that 
of  the  standard  couplet,  so  our  own  approximates 
more  and  more  to  that  of  the  standard  line  or  phrase, 
of  the  kind  always  quoted  in  reviews. 

"Soothed  by  the  charity  of  the  deep-sea  rain," 

or 

"I  saw  the  fading  edge  of  all  delight." 

to  quote  at  random  a  couple  of  examples  from  an 
excellent  modern  anthology,  lines  that  fulfil  every 
requirement  of  poetry  except  the  supreme  one  of 
inspiration. 

An  even  more  noticeable  feature  of  this  school, 
and,  indeed,  most  contemporary  verse,  is  its  lack  of 
content.  Ladies  and  gentlemen  with  nothing  in 
particular  to  say  display  the  utmost  taste  and  in- 


CREATIVE  ART  AND  REALITY    171 

genuity  in  saying  it.  Occasionally  a  vivid  personal 
experience  strikes  a  spark  of  authentic  inspiration,  as 
in  Mr.  Graves'  beautiful  Goliath  and  David,  but  such 
exceptions  only  serve  to  deepen,  by  contrast,  the 
impression  that  the  modern  poet  is  like  a  man  who 
provides  coloured  wine  glasses  for  a  teetotal  banquet. 
And  some  of  the  glasses  certainly  are  surprisingly 
graceful,  but  not  to  the  extent  of  sending  the  ginger 
beer  to  our  heads. 

We  are  interested,  and  pleasantly,  in  Mr.  TsTichols' 
clever  imitations  of  the  Elizabethan  sonnet,  in  Mr. 
Squire's  odd  rhythmic  catalogue  of  the  world's  major 
rivers  from  Congo  to  Colorado,  in  Mr.  Freeman's 
unexceptionable  reactions  to  natural  phenomena,  but 
how  different  is  this  from  the  authentic  vintage,  and 
how  willingly  would  we  sacrifice  it  all  for  one  such  art- 
less and  unforced  lyric  cry  as  that  of  the  scientist.  Sir 
Ronald  Ross,  on  his  discovering  the  parasite  of 
malaria  fever: 

"I  know  this  little  thing 
A  myriad  men  will  save. 
O  Death,  where  is  thy  sting? 
Thy  victory,  O  Grave?" 

This  man,  we  feel,  was  in  earnest,  as  white  hot 
as  Milton  denouncing  the  massacre  in  Piedmont  or 
Byron,  thundering  liberty  to  Hellas.  Heart  speaks 
to  heart,  by  fire  fire  is  kindled.  But  too  much 
earnestness  is  not  popular.  The  muse  is  a  demi- 
mondaine,  a  geisha,  to  divert  us  for  an  hour  beneath 
the  cherry  blossoms  with  her  laughter  and  her  wanton 


172  FACING  REALITY 

ways;  were  she  to  assume  the  airs  of  a  goddess,  her 
lovers  would  hesitate  whether  to  laugh  or  to  run  away. 
And  yet  poetry  is  the  art  least  of  all  corrupted  by 
commerce,  if  only  for  the  reason  that  even  in  the 
suburbs  it  is  difficult  to  whip  up  enough  demand  to 
make  it  pay. 

The  convention  of  heresy  is  not  so  pronounced  in 
poetry  as  in  painting,  where,  in  France  and  Italy,  even 
more  than  among  ourselves,  the  wildest  extravagances 
pass  muster  as  a  matter  of  course,  where  dadaists, 
futurists,  and  for  aught  we  know  to  the  contrary, 
super-post-futurists,  flit  across  the  limelight  in  un- 
ending succession,  where  the  chque  becomes  the  mob 
and  the  picture  the  poster,  and  artists  may  claim  to 
have  discovered  the  unique  commercial  secret  of  mar- 
keting their  own  advertisements. 

We  must  not  forget  the  school  of  modern  drama 
which  has  striven,  usually  in  the  teeth  of  financial  ex- 
pediency, to  bring  the  theatre  into  touch  with  serious 
and  vital  issues.  Unhappily,  this  noble  work  has  been 
partially  frustrated  by  an  unwillingness  of  its  pro- 
tagonists to  trust,  as  Shakespeare  did,  to  reality  and 
their  inspiration.  Their  plays  are,  in  fact,  sermons, 
the  puppets  on  the  stage  are  worked  so  as  to  point  a 
moral. 

Such  a  dramatist  as  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  may  be  as 
shallow  and  trivial  as  you  please,  but  his  characters 
are  at  least  more  like  real  men  and  women  than  Mr. 
Shaw's  and  Mr.  Galsworthy's  cockshy  types,  who 
are  put  up  in  order  to  say  ridiculous  things  and  be 
scored  off  before  the  audience. 


CREATIVE  ART  AND  REALITY    173 

What  Englishman  was  ever  such  an  improbable  ass 
as  Tom  Broadbent  in  John  Bull's  Other  Island 
or  the  almost  imbecile  officer  in  Great  Catherine, 
and  do  judges  and  members  of  Parliament  talk  such 
pompously  obvious  nonsense  about  society,  and  the 
rest  of  it,  as  when  Mr.  Galsworthy  wants  to  point  one 
of  his  excellent  lessons  in  humanity?  Being  thus 
didactic,  like  the  old  improving  novels,  these  plays  are 
sometimes  found  dull,  and  when  some  Heartbreak  or 
Jawbreak  House  is  left  empty  of  spectators,  there  is 
talk  of  Philistinism. 

Let  us,  at  least,  be  thankful  for  what  we  have.  The 
jingoism  and  decadence  of  the  'nineties  have  ceased  to 
attract,  and  we  are  getting  over  the  pre-war  cult  of 
ugliness  and  discord  as  ends  in  themselves.  Art  is 
waiting,  like  those  corpses  in  the  Valley  of  Dry  Bones, 
which  were  clothed  with  flesh  and  sinew,  but  in  which 
the  breath  of  life  had  not  yet  been  kindled. 

If  any  watchword  could  avail  for  that  inspiration, 
what  more  sufficient  or  glorious  could  be  named  than 
reality,  reality  for  the  lack  of  which  art  and  Ufe  perish 
together?  But  if  either  is  to  be  saved,  it  is  no  change 
of  words  that  is  needful  but  one  of  spirit.  Art  is  a 
spirit,  and  must  be  worshipped  in  spirit  and  in  truth. 


CHAPTER  X 

POLITICS  AND  REALITY 

IF  we  be  right  in  our  view  that  the  present  danger 
to  civilisation  arises  from  the  failure  of  mankind 
to  take  control  over  its  own  destinies,  then  the  phe- 
nomenon of  political  association  assumes  a  special  im- 
portance. For  the  state  is  the  outward  and  formal 
expression  of  the  collective  will,  not,  as  yet,  of  the 
whole  race,  but  of  as  large  portions  of  it  as  have  yet 
shewn  themselves  capable  of  effective  combination. 
It  is  the  multitude  thinking  and  acting  as  a  person. 

The  title  page  to  the  Leviathan  of  Thomas  Hobbes 
represents  a  monstrous  figure  of  a  man  made  of  men, 
and  it  is  in  such  a  way  that  we  should  think  of  our 
country.  But  we  would  go  a  step  further  than 
Hobbes  in  postulating  that  these  other  men,  our 
countrymen  who  make  up  the  state,  should  include 
not  only  those  living  now,  but  all  who  ever  have  borne 
or  will  bear,  the  name  of  Englishman. 

"We  are,"  a  djang  French  soldier  beautifully  ex- 
pressed it  before  Verdun,  "but  moments  in  the  life  of 
France."  Some  day,  perhaps,  these  Leviathans,  these 
men  of  men,  will  come  to  regard  themselves  as  mo- 
ments in  the  life  of  mankind. 

It  is  therefore,  a  matter  of  vital  importance  that 

these  invisible  personalities,  with  a  life  extending  over 

174 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  175 

centuries,  should  order  themselves  and  us  with  all 
wisdom  and  righteousness.  If  it  is  incumbent  upon 
the  man  to  get  right  with  reality,  the  obligation  is 
even  greater  upon  the  state.  And  of  all  the  evils  of 
our  time  the  most  alarming  is  surely  the  failure  of  the 
state,  not  only  here  but  in  practically  every  civilised 
nation,  to  rise  to  the  height  of  its  responsibility. 

It  has  long  been  accepted  as  the  shameful  axiom  of 
diplomacy  that  nations  in  their  dealings  with  each 
other  are  not  only  selfish  and  violent,  but  also  cunning 
and  treacherous  to  an  extent  vaguely  limited  by 
treaty  and  international  law,  but  even  Machiavelli 
himself  stopped  short  of  assuming  that  the  state  ex- 
pressed the  will,  not  of  the  community  nor  of  the  legal 
sovereign,  but  of  whatever  corrupt  interest  could 
succeed  in  pulling  the  wires. 

There  is  indeed,  no  human  institution  in  which  the 
phrases  commonly  used  to  describe  it  correspond  less 
to  the  facts  of  hfe.  When  we  pick  up  our  newspaper 
and  turn  to  the  political  intelligence,  few  of  us  realise 
that  nine-tenths  of  what  we  are  reading  is  more  or  less 
in  the  nature  of  camouflage  to  divert  our  attention 
from  what  is  really  going  on.  The  things  discussed 
and  ventilated  in  the  papers  are  altogether  different 
from  those  which  excite  the  interest  of  men  "in  the 
know." 

There  are,  in  fact,  two  distinct  worlds  of  politics. 
The  one  is  outward  and  visible,  and  its  changes  pro- 
duce an  effect  on  the  pubUc  at  large  of  a  kind  formerly 
credited  to  those  of  the  moon,  the  other  is  inward  and 
anything  but  spiritual,  it  moves  in  silent  and  myste- 


176  FACING  REALITY 

rious  ways,  and  by  its  changes,  known  only  to  a  few 
expert  astrologers,  our  fates  are  swayed. 

To  the  Victorians,  all  these  things  seemed  wonder* 
fully  simple  and  straightforward.  Representative 
government,  wisely  regulated,  was  a  panacea  for  all 
evils. 

When  the  Prince  Consort,  who,  for  all  his  heavy 
respectability,  was  a  man  of  more  good  sense  than  he 
is  usually  credited  with,  remarked  that  representative 
government  was  on  its  trial,  he  was  considered  to  have 
uttered  an  almost  unthinkable  blasphemy.  For  with 
the  Victorians  the  verdict  had,  as  usual,  preceded  the 
trial.  The  thing  ought  to  succeed  and  therefore  was 
a  success.  It  seemed  so  obvious  a  truth  that  where 
everybody  had  a  voice  in  choosing  the  men  who  should 
govern  him,  the  interests  of  everybody,  or  at  least  of 
the  majority,  would  be  consulted. 

The  radical  philosophy  of  which  John  Stuart  Mill 
was  the  most  authoritative  and  temperate  exponent 
proceeded  on  the  assumjition  that,  by  gradually 
broadening  the  basis  of  representation,  the  chronic 
tyranny  of  the  privileged  and  selfish  few  over  the 
many  would  become  a  memory  of  past  ages. 

Mill  himself  was  keenly  alive  to  the  difficulties  of 
preventing  the  majority  from  tyrannising  over  the 
minority,  but  that,  roughly  speaking,  power  would 
follow  the  vote,  neither  he  nor  any  one  of  his  contem- 
poraries seems  to  have  doubted.  And  when  the 
democratic  franchise  of  1867  was  passed  into  law, 
there  were  those  who,  like  Robert  Lowe,  imagined 
fliat  the  tyranny  of  the  mob  had  come  into  being  and 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  177 

that  the  whole  social  fabric  was  in  danger  of  dissolu- 
tion. 

Very  different  was  the  reality.  The  cool  and  far- 
sighted  Disraeli  had  made  no  miscalculation  when  he 
persuaded  the  stiif  and  reactionary  Tory  squires  that 
their  best  interests  lay  in  dishing  the  Whigs  by  out- 
bidding them  with  Demos.  It  is  almost  certain,  how- 
ever, that  he  had  no  knowledge  of  the  way  in  which 
the  ostensible  purpose  of  the  franchise  would  be  de- 
feated. He  trusted  to  the  enlightened  leadership  of 
the  gentry  securing  the  free  loyalty  of  the  people,  it 
had  been  his  dream  since  the  days  of  "Young 
England." 

But  the  gentry  were  by  no  means  enlightened  and 
were  on  the  point  of  becoming  merged  in  a  plutocracy. 
It  was  money  and  not  birth  that  eventually  secured 
the  control  of  the  franchise.  For,  in  truth,  the  second 
Reform  Bill  had  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  people  an 
instrument  of  power  which  they  were  quite  incom- 
petent to  use.  They  were  a  multitude  of  isolated 
individuals,  with  less  common  purpose  than  a  flock  of 
sheep. 

John  Smith,  with  a  vote  in  his  hand,  found  himself 
not  a  tyrant  but  a  groping  animalcule  in  a  sea  of  which 
he  only  knew  his  immediate  surroundings.  He 
was  called  not  to  dictate  a  policy  but  to  put  a  cross 
opposite  the  name  of  either  William  Browne,  J.P., 
or  Sir  Thomas  Robinson,  gentlemen  whose  principles 
and  personalities  were  profoundly  unknown  to  him. 

The  art  of  anticipating  and  guiding  the  opinions  of 
John  Smith  in  the  mass  was  one  already  extensively 


178  FACING  REALITY 

practised  in  commerce.  The  same  arts  that  could 
induce  him  to  buy  shoddy  goods  could  no  doubt  be 
used  to  make  him  vote  for  the  shoddy  policies  of 
shoddy  candidates,  who  could  be  trusted  to  act  as 
obedient  middlemen  between  the  public  and  their  mas- 
ters. It  was,  of  course,  all-important  for  it  never  to 
get  about  that  this  was  being  done. 

If  John  Smith  were  once  to  realise  that  he  was  both 
a  slave  and  a  dupe,  alarm  and  indignation  might  teach 
him  the  secret  of  becoming  a  tyrant  in  good  earnest. 
Accordingly  democracy  must  become  a  catchword  of 
the  same  nature  as  Christianity.  Anybody  who 
called,  "Lord,  Lord!"  to  Demos  was  assumed  to  be 
a  loyal  member  of  his  kingdom,  and  it  would  be  as 
grave  a  breach  of  decorum  to  question  the  democracy 
of  the  English  state  as  the  Christianity  of  the  Enghsh 
Church. 

The  result  is  that  scarcely  an  inkling  of  the  real  his- 
tory of  the  last  half -century  has  been  allowed  to  get 
into  the  history  books.  We  are  almost  invariably 
treated  to  accounts  of  the  growth  of  democracy,  as  if 
the  forms  of  power  were  the  same  thing  as  its  reality. 
Very  rarely  are  we  given  the  least  hint  that  the  most 
important  political  event  of  all  has  been  the  successful 
conspiracy  to  render  these  forms  wholly  devoid  of  con- 
tent, and  to  set  up  the  rule  of 'Dives  in  the  name  of 
Lazarus. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  art  of  circumvent- 
ing the  franchise  is  one  peculiar  to  England.  It  has 
accompanied  democracy  as  disease  used  to  follow  in 
the  wake  of  armies.    And  it  is  not  without  significance 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  179 

that  as  the  vocabulary  of  modern  war  is  mostly 
French,  so  that  of  political  corruption  is  almost  en- 
tirely American.  Caucus,  boodle,  gerrymander, 
graft  and  boss  are  wafted  to  our  shores  with  a  distinct 
Yankee  twang. 

But  English  corruption  can  at  least  plead  the  dis- 
tinction of  greater  antiquity.  Our  very  word  baronet 
can  claim  a  certain  affinity  with  Tammany,  being  the 
name  of  an  office  created  by  an  English  King  for  the 
frank  and  sole  purpose  of  selling  it.  And  the  United 
States  might  never  have  come  to  exist  at  all,  had  not 
the  Enghsh  politics  of  the  eighteenth  century  been  a 
sink  of  corruption. 

It  is  one  of  the  ironies  of  history  that  the  first  deci- 
sive move  in  the  shepherding  of  the  electorate  was  the 
result  of  a  genuine  effort  to  make  its  power  effective. 
What  was  known  as  a  fancy  franchise  had  been  im- 
posed by  Disraeli's  reform  Bill  upon  the  city  of 
Birmingham,  each  elector  was  to  be  allowed  two  votes 
for  three  seats  in  order  to  give  the  minority  as  well 
as  the  majority  the  chance  of  being  represented  in 
Parliament. 

But  the  practical  interpretation  usually  placed  upon 
democracy  has  been  the  unlimited  legal  despotism  of 
the  hundred  over  the  ninety  and  nine,  and  the  radicals 
of  Birmingham,  being  the  majority  at  the  time,  were 
furious  that  anybody  but  themselves  should  have  a 
voice  in  choosing  a  member. 

Accordingly,  a  group  of  able  and  strong-willed 
men,  of  whom  the  principal  was  Mr.  Joseph  Chamber- 
lain, conceived  the  idea  of  forming  the  electors  of  their 


180  FACING  REALITY 

party  into  a  voluntary  and  disciplined  army.  Every 
voter  was  to  be  instructed  which  two  of  the  three 
Radical  candidates  he  was  to  vote  for,  in  order  that 
there  might  be  no  overlapping. 

The  immediate  result  of  this  experiment  was  a  com- 
plete success,  the  purpose  of  the  fancy  franchise  to 
give  the  minority  a  chance  was  defeated  and  this 
kind  of  franchise  soon  disappeared  from  the  Statute 
Book.  But  the  success  of  the  Birmingham  caucus,  as 
it  was  called,  had  been  so  striking  that  it  was  not  al- 
lowed to  die  with  the  attainment  of  its  immediate 
object. 

On  the  contrary,  it  was  developed  and  strength- 
ened, and  so  brilliant  seemed  the  idea  of  disciplining 
the  electorate,  that  it  was  taken  up  by  both  of 
the  principal  parties  in  the  state.  The  essence  of 
the  caucus  consisted  in  its  combining  the  form  of 
democracy  with  the  reahty  of  a  secret  and  centralized 
despotism. 

A  central  organisation,  financed  nobody  knew  how 
and  controlled  nobody  knew  by  whom  imposed  its 
candidates  on  the  constituencies  and  its  will  on  these 
candidates  when  they  were  elected.  The  Prime  Min- 
ister himself  was  reduced  to  a  position  corresponding 
to  that  of  Jove  in  the  old  mythology,  the  all-wor- 
shipped father  of  the  universe,  who  is  yet  powerless 
in  his  omnipotence  against  the  fates  who  sit  and  spin 
in  secret. 

The  most  powerful  statesmen  were  helpless  in  the 
grip  of  the  machine.  Even  Gladstone's  right-hand 
man,  Mr.  Forster,  sunk  into  the  grave  exhausted  by 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  181 

a  losing  fight  for  his  own  independence,  and  that 
doughtiest  of  old-fashioned  radicals,  Joseph  Cowen, 
who  refused  to  sell  his  soul  to  the  caucus,  was  perse- 
cuted, attacked  by  ruffians  in  the  street,  and  finally- 
driven  to  retire  from  his  constituency  of  Newcastle  in 
disgust  and  weariness. 

It  was  hopeless  for  any  ordinary  candidate  to  adver- 
tise himself  successfully  to  the  electors  without  the 
co-operation  of  the  caucus  and  if,  once  elected,  he 
was  rash  enough  to  display  a  will  of  his  own,  the  whole 
power  of  the  machine  could  be  turned,  impalpable  yet 
overwhelming,  on  to  his  constituency,  which  would 
rapidly  become  too  hot  to  hold  him. 

The  spirit  of  competitive  sport,  which  is  such  a 
feature  of  this  latest  period  of  our  history,  was  of  in- 
estimable value  to  the  caucus  bosses.  Nobody  was 
more  dehghted  with  the  idea  of  playing  the  party 
game  in  its  utmost  rigour  than  the  old  landed  gentry, 
who  had  the  tradition  of  the  rotten  boroughs  in  their 
blood  and  the  spoils  of  the  common  lands  in  a  grasp 
that  they  did  not  mean  to  relax. 

The  sport  of  dishing  the  radicals  was,  to  them, 
almost  on  a  par  with  that  of  hunting  the  fox,  and  it  is 
extraordinary  to  what  depths  of  trickery  and  tyranny 
they  could  descend  when  once  the  sporting  instinct 
was  fairly  roused. 

Gladstone,  in  particular,  was  assailed  with  a  coarse- 
ness and  venom  from  which  his  years  and  character  as 
well  as  the  noblesse  oblige  of  his  opponents  might 
have  saved  him.  But  neither  of  the  two  factions,  for 
it  would  be  a  misnomer  to  speak  of  them  by  a  more 


182  FACING  REALITY 

respectful  name,  could  fairly  claim  a  superiority  in  the 
arts  of  corruption. 

But  here  we  must  make  a  quahfication  by  the 
ignoring  of  which  the  opponents  of  the  caucus  have 
succeeded  in  discrediting  their  case  in  the  eyes  of  tem- 
perate men.  It  is  absurd  to  go  to  the  length  of  speak- 
ing of  all  of  our  statesmen  as  corrupt  scoundrels  or 
scoundrelly  Jews  for  no  better  reason  than  that  they 
have  stooped  to  conformity  with  a  system  that  they 
must  have  known  was  dishonest.  To  talk  thus  is  to 
display  a  woful  ignorance  of  human  nature. 

A  man  who  has  the  choice  between  devoting  powers 
that  he  feels  within  him  to  his  country's  service,  and 
dropping  ignominiously  and  unheeded  out  of  any 
chance  of  usefulness,  must  often  convince  himself  that 
it  is  better  to  wink  at  what  he  is  powerless  to  prevent 
than  to  break  his  lance  against  windmills. 

Such  a  choice  was  forced  upon  the  elder  Pitt,  in 
whom  the  love  of  his  country  was  a  passion,  and  who, 
though  a  poor  man,  had  deliberately  refused  to  accept 
for  himself  the  customarj^  perquisites  of  office.  He 
found  that  he  could  only  remain  in  power  at  a  time 
when  he  rightly  judged  his  leadership  to  be  necessary 
to  the  country,  by  allying  himself  with  the  corrupt 
Duke  of  Newcastle. 

The  alliance  was  concluded,  Newcastle  was  left  to 
do  the  dirty  work  (and  in  fairness  it  should  be  said 
that  it  was  for  his  party's,  not  his  own,  advantage), 
while  Pitt  raised  England  out  of  the  valley  of  humili- 
ation to  the  summit  of  triumph  in  the  Seven  Years* 
War. 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  183 

To  give  the  Devil  less  than  his  due  is  only  to  put 
sympathy  on  his  side,  and  the  man  who  attacks  our 
political  system  by  making  out  Lord  Grey  of  Fallo- 
den  a  hack,  or  Mr.  Balfour  a  fool  puts  himself  out  of 
court.  Perhaps  nothing  has  so  weakened  the  criti- 
cism of  our  pohtical  system  as  the  effort  of  some  of  its 
best  known  assailants  to  turn  the  whole  affair  into  an 
anti-Semitic  melodrama. 

What  has  actually  happened  is  the  natural  and  al- 
most inevitable  result  of  the  great  failure  of  life  to 
adjust  itself  to  reality.  Politics  has  merely  been 
brought  into  line  with  commerce  and  every  other 
branch  of  human  activity.  To  turn  against  individual 
politicians  as  if  they  were  a  species  of  malevolent 
reptile  is  as  unjust  as  it  is  ridiculous. 

Even  when  we  speak  of  a  conspiracy  to  defeat  the 
logical  implications  of  democracy  we  are  using  lan- 
guage that  requires  careful  qualification.  For  the 
conspiracy  though  real,  is  largely  unconscious  and  un- 
organised, the  conspirators  are  probably  more  apt  to 
regard  themselves  as  the  driven  than  the  drivers. 

The  ownership  of  great  possessions,  as  the  greatest 
of  all  seers  into  human  nature  divined,  is  in  itself  a 
compulsion  upon  the  owner.  It  commits  him  to  their 
defence,  the  "haves"  can  hardly  help  banding  them- 
selves together  against  the  "have-nots."  The  caucus 
was  not,  in  England  at  any  rate,  the  invention  of 
plutocracy,  but  the  opportunity  of  using  it  for  their 
own  purposes  was  too  obvious  and  simple  for  those 
having  riches  to  neglect.    They  were  not  necessarily 


184  FACING  REALITY 

either  more  villainous  or  more  subtle  than  any  other 
class  of  men. 

But  what  is  it  that  gives  the  rich  man  his  *'puH" 
over  the  caucus,  and  therefore  over  the  state?  How 
is  it  that  the  instinct  of  men  to  unite  for  political  pur- 
poses is  not  sufficient  to  run  the  machinery  it  has 
brought  into  being?  The  reason  is  simple — ^the 
motive  power  of  the  caucus  is  money,  and  for  it  to  be 
run  efficiently  a  continuous  and  lavish  supply  is  es- 
sential. Its  powers  of  advertisement  and  suggestion 
need  to  be  so  great  as  to  make  it  hopeless  for  any  in- 
dividual to  oppose  them.  And  the  very  business  of 
opposing  and  competing  with  the  other  caucus  forces 
both  the  pace  and  price  of  the  game. 

The  obvious  way  of  raising  funds  is  hy  levying  a 
subscription  upon  members  of  the  party.  This,  osten- 
sibly, is  what  is  done,  and,  in  the  so-called  Labour 
party,  has  to  be  done  efficiently.  But  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  ordinary  man  for  his  party,  especially  when 
that  party  has  ceased  to  stand  for  any  intelligible 
principle,  is  seldom  great  enough  to  loosen  his  purse 
strings  to  any  sufficient  extent. 

Where  a  man  cannot  see  the  result  of  his  generosity, 
he  is  apt  to  rely  on  that  of  the  man  next  door  and  the 
genteel  class  has  too  little  instinct  for  combination  to 
submit  to  a  regularly  assessed  levy.  And  yet  the 
money  has  got  to  be  raised  somehow,  or  the  caucus 
will  cease  to  function. 

There  is  only  one  way  in  which  the  necessary  fuel 
can  be  brought  to  the  machine.  Those  whom  the  vicis- 
situdes of  commerce  have  endowed  with  a  superfluity 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  185 

of  wealth,  and  whose  subscriptions  can  easily  run  into 
thousands  of  pounds,  must  be  induced  to  supply  what 
funds  may  be  needful.  But  this  can  only  be  done  by 
offering  a  "quid  pro  quo." 

Now  the  caucus  that  happens  to  be  on  the  top  con- 
trols the  resources  of  the  state.  It  may  be  unable  to 
divert  public  funds  into  its  own  coffers,  but  through 
its  control  of  the  executive  it  is,  in  practice,  the  foun- 
tain of  public  honour,  and  by  its  control  of  the  major- 
ity in  the  Commons,  it  can,  within  certain  limits,  dic- 
tate or  veto  legislation. 

Both  these  functions  can,  and,  unless  the  caucus  is 
to  perish  by  inanition,  must  be  employed  to  raise 
money.  Even  the  prospect  of  their  use  will  be  suffi- 
cient to  attract  funds  when  the  party  is  out  of  office. 

The  sale  of  honours  has  been  so  open  and  flagrant 
that  nobody  has  been  able  to  defend  it,  and  so  neces- 
sary a  part  of  the  system  that  few  have  dared  to  kick 
against  the  pricks  by  attacking  it. 

The  instinct  that  makes  it  the  summit  of  a  man's 
ambition  to  put  "Lord"  or  "Sir"  before  his  name 
might  repay  study.  It  is  curiously  irrational,  for  the 
new  lord  is  honoured  for  his  money,  which  he  had 
before,  more  than  for  a  title  about  whose  origin  no- 
body is  deceived.  But  a  title  is  the  hall  mark  of  that 
gentility  after  which  the  whole  middle  class  groans  in 
travail  until  now,  and  there  is  no  moment  of  purer  or 
more  mystical  ecstasy  in  the  life  of  the  suburban-bred 
woman  than  that  in  which  she  first  hears  herself  ad- 
dressed as  "Your  ladyship." 

Into  such  secrets  of  the  heart  it  would  be  irreverent 


186  FACING  REALITY 

to  pry.  Suffice  it  that  the  demand  for  this  strangely 
styled  honour  has  been  so  steady  and  so  opulently 
backed  as  to  have  made  this  form  of  corruption  a 
regular  part  of  our  political  system — so  much  so  that 
since  the  quite  recent  formation  of  the  caucus,  some 
four-hundred  and  fifty  peerages  and  innumerable 
lesser  honours  have  been  conferred. 

It  should  be  remembered,  however,  that  certain  of 
these  are  given  not  as  a  return  for  money  but  as  a 
reward  for  obedience — officious  venality  must  have  its 
price — and  a  very  few  for  real  merit  of  some  kind,  to 
keep  up  a  pretence  of  honesty  for  the  system. 

With  legislation  the  problem  is  not  quite  so  simple. 
It  is  not  pretended  that  laws  are  put  up  to  sale  as  if 
they  were  titles.  It  was,  indeed,  said  that  the 
National  Insurance  scheme  of  1911  was  a  deUberate 
ramp  on  the  part  of  certain  great  insurance  companies, 
and  that  certain  heads  of  these,  who  also  contributed 
largely  to  the  Unionist  party  funds,  prevented  that 
party  from  serious  opposition  to  the  bill. 

This  charge,  though  very  noisily  asserted,  was, 
however,  not  backed  by  a  tittle  of  serious  evidence,  and 
was  suspiciously  coloured  by  anti-Semitic  prejudice. 
It  must,  however,  be  added  that  to  produce  more  than 
most  indirect  evidence  of  a  corrupt  bargain  which,  if 
made  at  all,  would  be  verbal  and  in  strict  secrecy, 
would  be  a  task  of  almost  superhuman  magnitude. 

It  can  safely  be  asserted  that  the  caucus  is  not  going 
to  cut  its  own  throat  by  legislation  likely  to  be  openly 
offensive  to  those  who  supply  it  with  funds.    And  this 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  187 

merely  negative  corruption  may,  by  imperceptible 
degrees,  take  on  a  positive  aspect. 

It  is  at  any  rate  a  fact  that  so  shrewd  a  man  as 
Cecil  Rhodes  thought  it  worth  his  while  to  conciliate 
the  Irish  Nationalist  Party  by  a  little  backsheesh, 
though  in  fairness  it  must  be  allowed  that  his  sym- 
pathy with  the  Home  Rule  cause  was  genuine  and 
consistent. 

It  is  impossible  to  imagine  any  too  great  delicacy  in 
those  who  condescend  to  a  system  whose  very  basis 
is  corruption.  One  of  the  most  successfully  hushed 
up  scandals  of  our  time  is  the  flagrant  fact  that  those 
who  have  the  running  of  it  neither  will  nor  dare  submit 
to  an  audit  of  their  party  funds. 

That  the  origin  and  disposal  of  these  enormous 
funds  should  be  open  and  above  board  is  so  elementary 
p,  dictate  of  honesty  and  common  sense  that  we  can 
hardly  imagine  anybody  seriously  disputing  it.  Those 
who  are  asked  to  subscribe  for  purposes  avowedly 
public-spirited  and  patriotic  have  surely  a  right  to 
know  how  their  money  is  being  spent.  Even  the 
shadiest  club  would  hesitate  to  brand  itself  as  an  open 
swindle  by  declining  an  audit. 

There  can  be  only  one  reason  for  the  caucus  making 
this  vile  refusal,  that  it  dares  not  reveal  where  and  how 
it  gets  and  spends  its  money,  that  it  loves  darkness 
rather  than  light  because  its  deeds  are  evil.  Our 
political  system  is,  in  fact,  founded  on  a  basis  of  secret 
and  shameless  corruption,  and  is  infected  with  a  gan- 
grene which  is  bound,  in  time,  to  reach  every  limb  and 


188  FACING  REALITY 

poison  the  whole  body.  The  very  mother  of  Parha- 
ments  has  become  a  harlot. 

The  first  result  of  this  evil  state  of  things  must  be 
a  general  lowering  of  public  honesty  and  conscience. 
Those  who  have  swallowed  a  camel  by  accepting  the 
system  as  a  whole,  are  not  likely  to  strain  at  any  casual 
gnat  of  jobbery  or  falsehood.  One  form  of  corrupt 
power  which  we  have  not  yet  considered  is  that 
wielded  by  the  executive  in  the  control,  not  only  of 
honours,  but  of  appointments. 

How  deeply  such  a  public  service  as  the  army  may 
be  affected  by  the  impalpable  yet  formidable  power 
which  is  known  as  "influence"  is  the  common  knowl- 
edge of  any  one  at  all  familiar  with  military  circles. 
The  veil  hiding  the  dirty  and  cynical  intrigue  that  was 
rife  behind  the  scenes  during  the  crisis  of  the  war  has 
been  only  partially  lifted  by  happily  indiscreet  mem- 
oirs. 

There  were  hardly  any  limits  to  what  might  be  done 
with  the  aid  of  the  right  people.  Jobs  might  be  found 
for  incompetents  and  an  honourable  safety  for 
cowards — indeed  much  of  what  murmuring  there  was 
against  conscription  was  due  to  the  shrewdly  sus- 
pected fact  that  one  of  a  gentleman's  privileges,  if  he 
chose  to  exercise  it,  was  that  of  saving  his  skin. 

But  what  is  most  serious  of  all  is  that  in  the  very 
department  of  life  in  which  a  sense  of  reality  is  most 
imperative,  the  divorce  from  it  is  most  complete.  The 
whole  political  world  is  one  of  elaborate  make-believe. 
The  things  that  are  seen  and  discussed  are  but 
shadows  thrown  on  the  screen  by  those  whose  busi- 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  189 

ness  it  is  to  divert  investigation  from  what  lies  behind. 
The  real  issues  are  just  those  which  the  rich  men  on 
whom  the  caucus  depends  do  not  want  brought  to  the 
fore. 

However  well  they  may  be  bamboozled  into  quies- 
cence, the  majority  has  still  the  power  of  the  vote,  and 
if  they  could  only  find  the  secret  of  using  it,  or  be  con- 
fronted vrith  a  direct  and  real  issue  of  their  will 
against  that  of  their  masters,  might  effect  a  most 
alarming  redistribution  of  wealth  and  privilege.  The 
only  way  in  which  this  can  be  prevented  is  by  accom- 
plishing what  Abraham  Lincoln  too  guilelessly  be- 
lieved to  be  an  impossibility,  the  feat  of  fooling  all  the 
people  all  the  time. 

The  competitive  spirit  must  be  aroused.  The 
election  must  be  treated  as  if  it  were  an  enormous 
voting  match  between  the  red  colour  and  the  blue. 
Enough  grandiloquent  talk  must  precede  it  to  create 
the  impression  that  something  is  going  to  be  done, 
enough  window  dressing  must  take  place  after  it  to 
make  it  possible  to  advertise  that  something  has  been 
done. 

Thus,  at  one  election,  a  great  deal  of  play  was  made 
with  a  song  to  the  effect  that  God  had  created  the  land 
for  the  people  and  in  which  the  voters  were  supposed 
to  ask  why,  with  the  ballot  in  their  hand,  they  should 
be  beggars.  The  only  reasonable  implication  of  such 
a  song  was  that  a  redistribution  of  land  on  the  most 
generous  scale  was  in  contemplation,  that  the  old 
commons  were  at  last  coming  back  to  the  common 
people. 


190  FACING  REALITY 

Of  course  the  party  which  made  use  of  this  appeal 
had  no  idea  of  accomphsliing  anything  of  the  sort,  and 
made  no  pretence  of  doing  so  when  it  came  into  office 
beyond  evincing  signs  of  an  intention,  cut  short  by  the 
war,  of  using  the  land  cry,  in  a  slightly  altered  form, 
for  another  campaign.  Ever  since  the  "three  acres 
and  a  cow"  of  the  'eighties,  the  susceptibility  of  Hodge 
to  such  appeals  has  been  notorious,  and  his  optimism 
seemingly  limitless. 

It  is  remarkable  with  what  success  the  all-dominat- 
ing social  issue  has  hitherto  been  burked  at  elections, 
or  reduced  to  a  secondary  importance.  The  Home 
Rule  controversy  provided  the  main  interest  for  the 
three  elections  preceding  1900,  in  those  of  1900  and 
1918  a  wave  of  patriotism  directed  at  a  foreign  enemy 
was  used  to  divert  attention  from  domestic  issues,  the 
two  elections  of  1910  were  fought  over  a  squabble 
with  the  peers,  and  the  only  election  in  which  the  social 
question  was  really  to  the  fore  was  that  which  carried 
the  "Liberal"  party  to  power  in  1906. 

At  that  time  the  country  was  both  sick  and  suspi- 
cious of  the  party  in  office,  whom  it  rightly  regarded  as 
averse  to  any  sort  of  reform,  and  the  powerful  trades' 
unions  were  thoroughly  aroused  by  a  judicial  decision 
subversive  of  their  privileges  for  many  years  past, 
and  greeted  with  ill-disguised  satisfaction  by  that 
party. 

The  Liberals,  perhaps  rashly  in  the  heat  of  the  con- 
test, allowed  themselves  to  be  committed  to  a  gener- 
ous policy  of  social  reform,  and  the  electorate,  con- 
fronted at  last  with  this  as  a  direct  issue,  voted  for  it 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  191 

with  enthusiasm,  returning  the  Liberals  to  power  by  a 
record  majority. 

What  followed  is  of  great  interest.  Instead  of 
doing  anything  serious  to  carry  out  their  promise, 
beyond  a  grudging  reinstatement  of  the  trades'  unions 
in  their  privileges  and  a  pitifully  exiguous  dole  to  the 
aged  poor,  the  victorious  party  set  itself  to  a  long 
course  of  deliberate  camouflage.* 

The  first  session  was  mainly  devoted  to  an  educa- 
tional measure  which  was  concerned,  not  with  the 
pressing  need  of  training  up  the  younger  generation 
on  sane  and  honest  lines,  but  with  an  obscure  quarrel 
between  two  sects  professing  some  not  very  obvious 
connection  with  Christ. 

The  next  session  saw  a  scheme  for  reforming 
Ireland  which  was  probably  not  intended  to  pass,  and 
in  fact  did  not.  Then  appeared  a  grossly  unpopular 
measure  designed  to  amend  by  force  of  law  the 
drunken  habits  of  the  common  people  whose  cham- 
pions the  party  in  power  professed  to  be. 

If  one  of  the  principal  charges  brought  against  the 
party  system  had  been  true,  that  the  whole  game  was 
arranged  in  amity  behind  the  scenes  between  the  two 
front  benches,  this  might  have  succeeded  even  better 
than  it  did.  But  if  the  rivalry  of  principles  is  a  sham, 
that  for  power  and  office  is  genuine  enough,  and  the 
profound  and  far-sighted  knaves  who  are  supposed  to 
pull  the  wires  have  no  counterparts  in  real  hfe.  The 
devil  is  an  ass. 

*  Their  bold  and  really  liberal  grant  of  free  constitutions  to  the 
annexed  Boer  Republics  must,  however,  be  counted  to  them  for 
righteousness. 


192  FACING  REALITY 

The  House  of  Lords,  now  the  pliant  tool  of  the 
Unionist  caucus,  in  its  eagerness  to  secure  an  advan- 
tage, nearly  gave  the  game  away  altogether.  It  threw 
out  the  unpopular  Liberal  measures  one  after  the 
other,  and  for  three  years  the  record  majority  found 
itself  in  a  position  of  ridiculous  impotence.  The  bluff 
had,  in  fact,  been  called,  and  the  calling  of  bluffs  is  not 
healthy  for  a  system  whose  whole  success  depends  on 
their  passing  unchallenged. 

The  reply  of  the  Liberals  was  ingenious.  They 
patched  up  a  Budget,  a  clumsy  piece  of  finance  de- 
signed less  to  benefit  the  country  than  to  irritate  the 
Lords.  Their  success  was  almost  more  than  they 
could  have  hoped.  The  Lords,  with  a  light-hearted- 
ness  that  is  almost  incredible,  allowed  themselves  to 
be  persuaded  into  violating  a  constitutional  principle 
of  more  than  two-hundred  years'  standing  by  throw- 
ing the  Budget  back  in  the  face  of  the  Commons. 

It  was  a  dangerous  move,  for  the  gilt  was  now  fast 
wearing  off  the  party  gingerbread.  The  Liberals  did 
their  best  by  sending  up  rockets  to  announce  a  revolu- 
tion, but  the  electorate,  now  thoroughly  fed  up,  were 
wishing  a  plague  upon  both  factions  impartially. 

There  seemed,  however,  no  way  of  escape.  A  newly 
formed  Labour  Party  was  almost  indecently  eager  to 
conform  with  the  system  and  had  given  few  signs 
either  of  independence  or  initiative.  It  was  not  that 
the  country  was  less  sick  of  the  Liberals  but  that  it 
was  more  sick  of  the  Lords,  and  the  Northern  manu- 
facturing districts  were  firm  against  the  Unionist  re- 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  193 

vival  of  protection,  another  red  herring  that  had  been 
drawn  across  the  social  trail. 

A  bored  and  apathetic  electorate,  in  two  successive 
elections,  allowed  the  existing  government  to  continue 
in  office  for  want  of  a  better,  but  by  a  majority  now 
dependent  upon  the  one  party  that  seriously  meant 
business,  that  of  the  Irish  nationalists. 

Ireland  has  been  the  Nemesis  of  the  party  system, 
for  here  the  politicians  have  been  brought  up  against 
a  reality  of  which  no  amount  of  camouflage  and 
trickery  can  suffice  to  dispose.  It  is  formidable 
enough,  in  all  conscience,  to  demand  the  highest  quali- 
ties of  statesmanship  backed  by  patient  enquiry  into 
the  facts,  and  to  make  it  part  of  an  insincere  game  is 
sheer  suicide.  This  is,  however,  exactly  what  was 
done.  And  yet  the  outstanding  facts  of  the  situation 
might  have  been  plain  enough  to  any  one  who  cared 
to  enquire  into  them. 

Ireland  is  divided  into  two  distinct  communities, 
one  concentrated  in  the  North-East  comer  of  the 
island,  like  an  overflow  from  the  British  mainland, 
with  a  temperament  and  tradition  bitterly  hostile  to 
that  of  the  rest  of  Ireland,  and  the  other  dreamy,  mer- 
curial, but  endowed  with  a  ruthless  logic  the  very 
opposite  to  the  English  spirit  of  compromise  and  a 
sense  of  nationahty  that  centuries  of  wi'ong  have 
sharpened  almost  to  madness. 

And  the  problem  was  complicated  by  the  fact  that 
England  was  engaged  in  forcing  a  hated  and  clumsy 
rule  upon  Ireland,  and  that  nothing  would  satisfy 
Irish  nationalism  but  to  force  an  equally  hated  rule 


194  FACING  REALITY 

upon  the  Northern  Protestants  who  were — a  fact  in- 
credible to  the  pohticians — really  determined  to  die 
rather  than  yield. 

Some  strange  fatality  ordained  that  England 
should  shew  her  worst  and  stupidest  side  in  dealing 
with  Ireland.  Gladstone,  who  no  doubt  was  thor- 
oughly sincere,  once  he  had  committed  himself  to  the 
championship  of  Home  Rule,  was  only  converted  to 
it  when  the  Nationalists  for  the  first  time  held  the 
balance  of  power. 

The  attitude  of  the  Conservatives  was  even  less 
defensible.  Lord  Salisbury,  through  his  Irish  Secre- 
tary, Lord  Carnarv^on,  succeeded  in  convincing  the 
lucid  intelhgence  of  Parnell  that  the  Conservatives 
were  ready  with  a  Home  Rule  plan  of  their  own,  when 
Gladstone  made  his  bid,  and  the  whole  force  of  the 
Conservative  party  was  flung  into  violent  opposition 
to  the  very  scheme  with  which  it  had  been  coquetting. 

A  fatal  and  vicious  situation  was  now  created, 
which  debarred  all  chance  of  peace  in  Ireland,  and  was 
exactly  calculated  to  fan  every  smouldering  grievance 
into  a  flame  of  hatred  and  civil  war. 

By  the  logic  of  the  game,  one  caucus  had  become 
committed  to  a  tyranny  of  England  over  Ireland  and 
the  other  to  a  no  less  odious  tyranny  of  Cathohc  Ire- 
land over  the  Protestant  North  East.  The  idea  of 
civil  war  was  played  with  as  if  it  were  a  toy,  and  it  was 
considered  a  clever  hit  when  one  of  the  keenest  players 
of  all  told  Ulster,  which  assuredly  did  not  need  telling, 
that  it  would  be  right  to  fight. 

However,  the  pohticians  were  only  too  glad  to  leave 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  195 

Home  Rule  alone  as  a  practical  proposition,  so  long 
as  Ireland  did  not  count  in  the  game.  But  when  the 
Nationalists  held  the.balance  between  the  Liberals  and 
the  Lords,  there  was  no  help  for  it  but  to  buy  their 
support  by  introducing  a  Home  Rule  Bill  of  the  only 
sort  they  would  tolerate,  one  that  submitted  the  Prot- 
estant North  East  to  the  despotism  of  a  Nationalist 
majority. 

It  is  probable  that  neither  side  meant  to  push  mat- 
ters to  extremities.  They  were  not  men  of  iron,  and 
to  do  them  justice,  not  cruel,  and  it  was  no  doubt 
anticipated  that  at  the  last  moment  a  compromise 
would  be  arrived  at  by  which  the  government  could 
repudiate,  under  plea  of  necessity,  their  inconvenient 
pledge  about  Ulster. 

But  the  terrible  reality  of  Irish  politics  had  not  been 
reckoned  with  by  the  men  of  pretence.  While  one 
English  party  was  playing  at  civil  war,  and  retired 
officers  were  collecting  the  wherewithal  to  buy  arms 
to  shoot  down  British  soldiers,  Ireland  was  preparing 
for  war  in  grim  earnest. 

The  Protestants  bound  themselves  by  the  name  of 
God  to  resist  oppression,  and  an  army  sprang  into 
being,  to  the  secret  joy  of  the  mighty  foe  who  was  all 
the  time  plotting  for  the  mastery  of  the  world,  and 
who  willingly  co-operated  with  the  party  of  patriotism 
and  the  Empire  in  the  supply  of  arms.  A  Nationalist 
army  began  to  take  form,  equally  hostile  to  Protestant 
Ulster  and  to  England.  To  add  to  the  difficulties  of 
the  situation,  an  abortive  attempt  to  cut  the  knot  with 


196  FACING  REALITY 

the  sword  shewed  that  the  army  was  not  to  be  relied 
upon  to  march  against  Ulster. 

The  situation  was  now  beyond  the  control  of  the 
politicians,  whose  feeble  efforts  to  smooth  matters 
over  were  baffled  by  the  fact  that  neither  Irish  party 
would  hear  of  compromise,  and  that  their  leaders  were 
plainly  warned  that  nothing  less  than  murder  would 
be  the  penalty  of  their  conceding  an  inch. 

It  was  thus  that,  by  the  reckless  folly  of  our  politi- 
cal system,  the  country  was  brought  to  the  verge  of  a 
disaster  from  which  she  was  only  saved,  just  in  time, 
by  the  declaration  of  the  European  war,  a  war  which 
might  have  been  averted  altogether  had  it  not  been 
for  the  encouragement  our  Irish  troubles  afforded  to 
our  enemies,  and  which  has  left  us  with  an  Ireland 
now  inflamed  to  a  bitterness  which  renders  it  a  moot 
question  whether  her  independence  would  not  be  a 
lesser  evil  than  her  forcible  retention  in  the  Empire. 
At  least  we  have  to  be  thankful  for  the  partial  recogni- 
tion of  the  fact  that  Ireland  is  not  one  nation  but  two.* 

The  disastrous  consequences  of  a  political  system 
founded  in  corruption  and  depending  for  its  life  upon 
make-beheve  could  hardly  be  better  exemplified.  We 
cannot  always  rety  upon  the  chapter  of  accidents  to 
interpose  between  our  mistakes  and  our  ruin.  We 
have  the  lesson  of  the  Tsardom  before  our  eyes  to 
shew  what  happens  to  a  governing  class  that  goes  on 
ignoring  reality  to  the  end. 

The  fact  that  the  collective  expression  of  our  will  is 

*  Written  in  August,  1921,  and  justified,  I  venture  ta  think,  in  the 
light  of  subsequent  events. 


POLITICS  AND  REALITY  197 

balked  and  our  eyes  blinded  by  those  we  elect  for  our 
leaders  constitutes  a  decisive  obstacle  to  any  hope  of 
reform.  Nor  is  the  cure  by  any  means  a  simple 
matter,  for  the  cause  is  not  in  any  individual  or  party, 
but  in  the  state  of  mind  and  education  which  renders 
the  many  the  easy  dupes  of  any  one  who  finds  it  worth 
while  to  dupe  them. 

One  thing,  however,  is  possible,  and  that  is  to  op- 
pose this  organised  campaign  of  lies  by  the  truth  upon 
every  occasion,  in  season  and  out  of  season.  We  are 
making  ourselves  parties  to  the  deception  whenever, 
through  laziness  or  ignorance,  we  fall  in  with  the  as- 
sumptions on  which  it  is  based. 

A'VHien  we  allow  ourselves  to  speak  of  the  names  of 
parties  as  if  these  stood  for  principles  and  were  not 
merely  the  labels  of  competing  factions,  when  we  get 
wildly  excited  at  such  deliberately  raised  storms  in 
teacups  as  those  about  Welsh  Disestablishment  and 
sectarian  education,  and  forget  such  criminal  negli- 
gence as  the  shelving  of  the  Poor  Law  Commission's 
report,  when  we  are  bounced  into  talking  as  if  the  only 
alternatives  for  an  Irish  policy  were  a  Unionist  and 
a  Nationalist  tyranny,  then  we  are  basely  surrender- 
ing the  fort  of  truth  to  its  enemies. 

It  is  the  part  of  a  patriotic  citizen  boldly  to  proclaim 
just  those  very  things  which  an  interested  convention 
has  made  taboo.  His  duty  is  to  seek  and  ensue  reality 
in  thought,  word  and  need,  no  matter  what  passions 
he  may  arouse  and  what  canons  of  taste  he  may 
infringe. 

In  the  darkest  hour  he  has  at  least  this  faith  to  sus- 


198  FACING  REALITY 

tain  him — ^that  the  truth  which  is  on  his  side  is  stronger 
than  all  the  lies  which  are  against  him.  And  it  will 
behove  him  to  be  careful  lest  the  very  righteousness  of 
his  indignation  carry  him  into  unjust  and  unproven 
attacks,  which  have  only  the  effect  of  knocking  his 
sword  out  of  his  hand  and  depriving  him  of  his  sole 
advantage  over  the  thing  he  assails.  To  lie  in  the  name 
of  the  truth  is  the  most  futile  of  all  paradoxes. 

Nor  will  it  be  of  much  avail  to  trust  to  this  or  that 
legislative  nostrum.  A  bill  making  compulsory  the 
audit  of  all  party  funds,  and  making  the  direct  or  in- 
direct sale  of  honours  or  appointments  a  felony  to  be 
expiated  in  gaol,  would  be  a  notable  triumph  of  com- 
mon sense  and  national  righteousness  and  is  an  object 
that  all  men  of  good-will  will  combine  to  promote,  but 
it  would  be  too  much  to  expect,  in  the  light  of  past 
history,  that  means  would  not  be  discovered  of  evad- 
ing it. 

The  resources  of  corruption  are  legion,  it  is  a  dis- 
ease which  may  be  cut  out  of  one  part  of  the  organism 
merely  to  make  its  appearance  in  another.  No  act 
of  legislation  will  avail,  there  must  be  the  fixed  and 
enlightened  determination  to  see  the  whole  truth  and 
act  for  the  whole  community — ^that  and  nothing  else. 


CHAPTER  XI 

EEALITY  AND  THE  SOCIAL  SYSTEM 

THE  investigation  in  the  last  chapter  has  been  nec- 
essary, because  it  is  impossible  to  separate  the 
practice  of  politics  from  the  theory  of  society.  Politics 
is  society  trying  to  control  itself,  and  if  the  political 
system  is  honeycombed  with  falsehood  or  corruption, 
it  is  not  likely  that  the  most  promising  schemes  of 
reform  will  succeed  in  "making  good." 

This  is  a  fact  too  apt  to  be  forgotten  by  those  who 
write  about  this  or  that  way  of  perfecting  the  social 
system,  as  if  thinking  about  these  things  were  as 
simple  a  matter  as  working  them.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  pathetic  of  fallacies. 

Some  brilliant  and  youthful  enthusiast,  burning 
with  a  generous  ardour  to  make  the  world  better,  will 
produce  a  book  sparkling  with  the  promise  of  things 
which  would  be  possible  in  a  world  of  men  and  women 
as  single-hearted  as  himself. 

If  he  is  a  national  guildsman,  he  postulates  a  com- 
munity of  generous  and  enlightened  workmen  co-op- 
erating to  set  up  a  fair  and  just  system  and  the  other 
classes  loyally  submitting  to  a  sympathetic  and  grad- 
ual confiscation  of  their  property. 

If  he  should  be  a  new  brand  of  Tory,  he  has  visions 
of  an  upper  class  public-spirited  and  enhghtened, 

199 


200  FACING  REALITY 

commanding  the  willing  allegiance  of  a  prosperous 
and  contented  people.  Perhaps  his  book  is  even  good 
enough  for  him  or  it  to  be  worth  using  for  purposes 
very  different  from  his  own. 

Even  in  theory,  it  is  but  following  the  will-o'-the- 
wisp  to  lose  touch  with  reality.  These  brilhant  trea- 
tises are,  for  the  most  part,  no  more  than  essays  in 
constructing  a  dream  world  according  to  our  desires, 
and  their  castles  in  the  clouds  are  of  a  kind  only  built 
upon  vapour. 

Our  aspiring  reformer,  if  he  should  be  considered 
worth  patronising  by  the  real  new  Tories,  will  find 
them  largely  to  consist  of  young  and  middle-aged 
sportsmen,  with  a  hearty  contempt  for  every  other 
class  and  way  of  life  than  their  own,  and  a  shrewd 
determination,  coloured  by  patriotic  sentiment,  to 
stick  by  any  means  to  everything  they  have  got. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  should  be  taken  up  by  the 
extreme  left,  he  will  find  himself  in  an  atmosphere  of 
short-sighted  hatred,  a  desire  less  to  reahse  a  happier 
state  of  tilings  than  to  get  even  with  the  other  classes 
by  getting  hold  of  their  property,  or  else  he  may  be 
landed  into  the  trivial  round  of  labour  politics,  an  im- 
broglio of  personal  jealousy,  of  suspicion  between 
comrade  and  comrade  and  union  and  union,  and  of 
petty  intrigue  that  will  soon  take  the  fine  edge  off  his 
democratic  idealism. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  ancient  of  social  fallacies  to 
talk  of  the  world  as  if  it  were  fashioned  not  out  of 
reality  but  out  of  dreams.  Any  scheme  of  reform  has 
got  to  be  worked  upon  men  and  through  men.    It  is 


REALITY  AND  SOCIAL  SYSTEM  201 

impossible  suddenly  to  arrest  the  long  process  of 
historical  development  and  to  act  as  if  men  were  more 
or  less  similar  units  without  a  past  and  with  a  future 
according  to  taste.  There  have  been  no  greater 
scourges  of  humanity  than  incomplete  theorists  to 
whom  some  sudden  turn  of  the  wheel  has  given  the 
power  of  experimenting  with  their  theories. 

Such  a  man  was  Robespierre,  the  honest  figurehead 
of  scoundrels  who  had  no  illusions  and  flung  his  pe- 
dantic head  into  the  basket  as  soon  as  it  ceased  to  be 
useful  to  them;  such  another,  in  all  probability,  is 
that  embittered  Russian  gentleman  who  calls  himself 
Lenin.  And  the  worst  of  living  among  unrealities  is 
that  it  engenders  a  peculiar  pitilessness  towards  the 
obstinate  flesh  and  blood  that  will  not  conform  to  the 
dream. 

The  young  Robespierre  lost  his  judicial  post  be- 
cause he  would  not  condemn  a  man  to  death,  and  it  is 
conceivable  that  the  disposition  of  Lenin  may  be  no 
more  unkindly  than  his  face. 

Nobody  has  any  right  to  advocate  a  new  order  of 
society  before  he  has  visualised,  with  all  possible  ex- 
plicitness,  how  this  is  to  be  brought  about,  not  in 
Utopia  or  Nowhere  or  Cloud  Cuckoo  Land,  but  in 
the  actual  world  around  him,  with  all  its  present  sor- 
didness  and  conflict  of  interests.  Otherwise  he  runs 
the  danger  of  becoming  a  veritable  social  pest.  His 
honest  eloquence  will  be  used  only  to  gild  the  dis- 
honest schemes  of  interested  persons.  In  particular, 
it  will  have  a  disastrous  effect  on  what  moral  sense 
may  abide  in  masses  of  men. 


202  FACING  REALITY 

Those  who  would  hesitate  deliberately  to  ruin  in- 
nocent people  by  taking  all  that  they  have,  will  be 
righteouslj'  indignant  at  their  recalcitrance  if  the 
operation  is  called  a  scientific  redistribution  of  prop- 
erty. And  comfortable  people  will  cheerfully  tolerate 
slums  and  starvation  for  others  if  any  effort  to  realise 
better  conditions  can  be  labelled  "waste"  or  "Bolshe- 
vism." The  merciless  man  closes  his  eyes  to  reality 
in  order  that  he  may,  with  a  cheerful  conscience,  close 
his  ears  to  pity. 

There  is  one  form  of  leaving  the  facts  out  of  ac- 
count which  is  almost  universal  in  schemes  for  reform- 
ing society  on  a  democratic  basis.  The  projector  first 
outlines  in  more  or  less  detail  how  the  democratic 
state  will  proceed  to  order  things  upon  wise  and  scien- 
tific lines,  and  at  the  same  time  provides  every  con- 
ceivable safeguard  for  making  it  the  genuine  expres- 
sion of  the  people's  will.  What  guarantee  he  has  that 
a  casual  majority  of  almost  uneducated  men  will  con- 
form to  any  of  his  lofty  intentions  he  never  thinks  of 
explaining. 

It  is  as  if  he  were  to  say,  "Here  is  a  thousand 
pounds,  half  of  it  ought  to  be  invested  in  Midland  pre- 
ferred and  the  other  half  it  would  be  well  to  confer 
upon  that  excellent  institution  the  Banana  Mission. 
I  shall  now  proceed  to  throw  it  out  of  the  window  to 
be  scrambled  for  by  small  boj^s  who  will  no  doubt 
accurately  carry  out  my  intentions."  Not  a  whit  less 
absurd  is  the  framing  of  elaborate  social  policies  in  the 
faith  that  Tom,  Dick  and  Harry  will  maintain  and 
defend  them. 


REALITY  AND  SOCIAL  SYSTEM  203 

Something  of  what  does,  in  fact,  happen  to  such 
schemes  has  been  seen,  time  and  again,  in  Municipal 
pohtics,  both  here  and  abroad.  Money  has  been  raised 
or  sweated  out  of  the  ratepayers  for  purposes  of  the 
most  plausible  and  progi*essive  showing,  and  has  paid 
for  an  inefficient  bureaucracy  giving  the  minimum 
of  advantage  to  those  for  whose  benefit  it  is  supposed 
to  be,  and  the  maximum  of  profit  to  those  who  have 
been  loudest  in  their  talk  about  principles. 

Ask  how  it  is  that  every  facility  is  afforded  to  some 
mismanaged  and  expensive  gas  company  while  a  no- 
toriously more  efficient  electrical  service  is  discour- 
aged, and  you  may  find  that  it  is  less  due  to  scientific 
or  economic  theorising  than  to  the  too  practical  con- 
sideration that  most  of  the  local  representatives  are 
shareholders  in  the  gas  company.  This  is  to  take  a 
particularly  mild  and  everyday  instance. 

The  Bolshevik  regime  in  Russia  is  an  instance  on 
the  grand  scale  of  what  happens  to  the  best  laid 
schemes  of  theorists  when  they  are  worked  by  astute 
egoists  in  the  midst  of  an  ignorant  or  apathetic  elec- 
torate. And  yet,  so  much  is  mankind  the  slave  of 
words,  that  sentiment  is  still  lavished  in  ultra-demo- 
cratic quarters  on  the  "people's  Soviets." 

The  social  problem  has  been  clouded  by  the  two 
fallacies  of  thought  which  we  have  already  examined, 
that  of  thinking  in  a  passion  and  that  of  simplifying 
the  facts  in  order  to  avoid  trouble. 

When  men  think  either  of  their  class  or  their  poli- 
tics, their  passions  are  generally  too  vigorously 
aroused  to  permit  of  their  taking  an  impartial  view  of 


204  FACING  REALITY 

the  situation.  And  they  simplify  the  facts  by  leaving 
out  every  portion  and  aspect  of  them  that  does  not 
fit  in  with  their  dream  world,  and  so  transmuting  or 
even  inventing  the  rest  as  to  make  them  the  perfect 
mirror  of  their  desires. 

Recent  research  has  revealed  a  function  of  the  sub- 
conscious mind  that  plays  a  not  inconsiderable  part  in 
the  determination  of  social  opinions.  It  is  called  re- 
pression, and  it  means  the  faculty  of  keeping  from 
the  light  of  consciousness  any  thought  or  memory  that 
arouses  unpleasant  associations.  There  are,  in  fact, 
some  things  about  which  the  mind  maintains  a  con- 
spiracy of  silence  even  against  itself. 

The  author  remembers  an  instance  of  one  fairly 
common  surname  which  on  two  separate  and  distinct 
occasions  he  not  only  unaccountably  forgot,  but  for 
which  his  memory  substituted  other  names,  slightly 
similar,  as  if  trying  to  suggest  a  way  out  of  an  un- 
pleasant situation.  So  curious  was  this  twice-repeated 
"shying-off"  the  same  apparently  common-place 
name,  that  enquiry  was  deemed  worth  while  into  the 
cause,  and  it  turned  out  that  this  name  was  associated 
with  an  extremely  unpleasant  and  humiliating  inci- 
dent many  years  previously,  which  had  almost  faded 
from  conscious  memory. 

Trivial  as  this  incident  may  be,  it  illustrates  a  way 
in  which  the  mind  frequently  works  in  dealing  with 
the  most  important  matters.  There  are  certain  in- 
decencies, as  it  were,  of  thought  that  one  does  not  like 
to  repeat  even  to  one's  own  brain. 

Take  the  controversies  that  centre  round  that  very 


REALITY  AND  SOCIAL  SYSTEM  205 

elastic  word  "democracy,"  and  seldom  lead  to  any 
profitable  issue  because  it  is  not  often  that  any  one 
likes  to  have  his  real  views  on  this  subject  so  closely 
examined  as  to  reveal  their  divergences  from  what 
they  are  supposed  to  be.  We  are  all,  at  any  rate  in 
public,  democrats  more  or  less,  just  as  the  most  re- 
spectable and  self-righteous  of  us  are  ready  to  gabble 
ourselves  miserable  sinners  for  the  purposes  of  the 
Litany. 

When  President  Wilson  talked  about  making  the 
world  safe  for  democracy  most  of  us  breathed  a  pious 
assent,  and  tacitly  regarded  the  invitation  as  equiva- 
lent to  one  for  ridding  the  world  of  as  many  Germans 
as  possible.  Only  one  or  two  honest  squires  some- 
times had  tbi  temerity  to  confide  to  each  other,  when 
the  female  substitute  for  the  butler  had  left  with  the 
coffee  tray: 

"That's  all  eyewash,  you  know.  Hanged  if  one 
wouldn't  sooner  have  the  old  Kaiser,  only  of  course 
one  mustn't  say  so." 

When  Plato  and  Aristotle  discussed  democracy, 
without  any  of  our  modern  enthusiasm,  they  were 
quite  clear  in  their  own  minds  as  to  what  they  were 
talking  about.  Democracy  meant  the  power  of  the 
people,  neither  more  nor  less.  And  in  modern  repre- 
sentative governments  the  power  of  the  people  comes 
to  be  the  same  thing  as  the  sovereignty  of  a  majority. 

If  the  dark  headed  people  of  the  community  were 
in  ever  such  a  slight  majority,  and  managed  to  decree 
the  death  by  torture  of  all  the  fair-headed,  that,  ac- 
cording to  the  convention  of  representative  govern- 


206  FACING  REALITY 

ment,  would  be  a  thoroughly  democratic  measure. 
"But,"  as  Euclid  was  wont  to  remark,  "this  is  absurd." 

Democracy  has  landed  itself  in  difficulties,  but  as 
we  are  all  democrats,  it  has  got  to  be  kept  upon  its 
pedestal  somehow.  Here,  very  often,  steps  in  the  po- 
litical philosopher,  with  his  ingenious  distinctions 
between  the  general  will  and  the  will  of  all,  and  his 
genial  assumption  that  whatever  democracy  may  be, 
it  is  something  pleasing  and  workable,  even  if  the 
word  has  to  be  taken  in  a  Pickwickian  or  Hegelian 
sense  to  make  it  so. 

The  one  question  to  which  people  either  cannot  or 
will  not  address  themselves  is,  taking  democracy  in 
its  linguistic  and  commonsense  meaning  as  the  utmost 
power  of  the  people  or  a  majority  of  them,  how  this 
is  to  be  made  effective,  what  are  going  to  be  its  results, 
and  whether  these  are  good  or  bad. 

We  have  seen  how,  largely  owing  to  sheer  confu- 
sion of  thought,  modern  democracy  has  come  to  mean 
the  giving  of  power  to  the  people  by  the  franchise, 
and  the  taking  of  it  away  by  the  caucus,  a  fact  that 
has  yet  to  find  its  way  into  treatises  on  what  is 
quaintly  called  "political  science." 

But  let  us  suppose  that  the  caucus  is  swept  away, 
a  thing  not  at  all  likely  mider  the  auspices  of  any 
Labour  organisation  at  present  existing,  and  that  the 
ffnajority  find  some  means  of  procuring  the  persons 
they  want  to  execute  the  policy  they  want.  Is  this 
a  contingency  that  the  advocates  of  democracy  in  the 
abstract  have  ever  attempted  to  visualise  in  the  con- 
crete? 


REALITY  AND  SOCIAL  SYSTEM  207 

We  know  how  wofuUy  misinformed  are  the 
majority  of  people  about  the  simplest  affairs,  how 
easily  masses  of  men  can  be  guided  or  stampeded  into 
this  or  that  opinion,  how  small  an  interest  the  vital 
issues  of  life  arouse  as  compared  with  its  trivialities, 
and  yet  we  cheerfully  face  the  conclusion  that  the 
united  suffrages  of  individuals  so  manifestly  unfitted 
for  public  resj^onsibility  will  evolve  a  sane  and  desir- 
able management  of  public  affairs. 

By  broadening  the  basis  of  the  franchise  we  auto- 
matically lower  the  educational  and  intellectual  stand- 
ard of  the  average  elector,  and  yet  we  hail  this  solu- 
tion as  if  it  were  the  most  obvious  of  panaceas. 

This  is  not  intended  as  a  refutation  of  the  demo- 
cratic idea,  but  as  a  warning  against  treating  anything 
so  complicated  and  bristling  with  difficulties  as  if 
it  were  the  merest  commonplace.  By  so  doing,  we 
should  not  even  be  good  democrats,  for  we  should 
merely  be  giving  a  formal  assent  to  the  word  while 
registering  a  subconscious  determination  to  evade  the 
thing. 

There  is  neither  sense  nor  virtue  in  trusting  to  the 
bhnd  faith  that  is  the  last  refuge  of  intellectual  dis- 
honesty. If  we  believe  that  the  flock  is  wiser  than 
the  sheep  or  that  a  number  of  uneducated  men  can 
make  up  for  their  disadvantages  by  acting  together, 
let  us  at  least  be  clear  as  to  our  grounds  for  so  doing. 
Too  often,  when  examined,  they  resolve  themselves 
into  sheer  flunkeydom  to  Demos,  or  into  a  fatalistic 
resolve  that  what  cannot  be  altered  had  better  be 
believed  in. 


208  FACING  REALITY 

We  allow  ourselves  to  be  labelled  this  or  that,  we 
are  democrats  or  socialists  or  revolutionaries  as  if  that 
settled  everything,  or  as  if  it  were  a  matter  of  the  least 
importance  to  ourselves  or  anybody  else  under  what 
kind  of  word  we  choose  to  masquerade.  Directly  we 
have  acquired,  at  second  hand,  our  distinguishing 
brand  of  opinion,  we  cease  to  think  or  to  see.  We  are 
no  longer  seekers,  we  know  the  truth.  To  take  a  few 
examples  from  ordinary  conversation: 

"My  dear  fellow,  you  can  hardly  expect  me,  as  a 
Catholic,  to  sym.pathise  with  you." 

"I  don't  know  what  you  think  you're  driving  at, 
but  I  warn  you  that  I'm  not  going  to  have  any  Radi- 
cals in  my  house,  so  take  care." 

"But  that  directly  violates  the  first  principles  of 
Free  Trade." 

"No,  comrade,  that  is  just  what  the  Capitalist  press 
says." 

"Do  you  mean  to  insult  women?" 

If  we  would  save  ourselves  and  society,  we  must 
at  all  costs  regain  our  singleness  of  vision.  We  can 
only  become  partisans  by  ceasing  to  be  men.  In  that 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  which  is  the  Kingdom  of  Truth, 
there  is  neither  party  nor  dogma,  and  they  look  out 
upon  the  world,  not  as  if  they  expected  to  find  con- 
firmation for  what  they  already  believe,  but  with  all 
the  enquiring  wonder  of  a  child  who  catches  his  first 
glimpse  of  the  sea.  Only  by  such  means  does  life 
maintain  a  perpetual  freshness  and  the  ennui  which  is 
worse  than  death  is  kept  at  a  distance. 

It  is  no  part  of  our  purpose  to  enter  into  competi- 


REALITY  AND  SOCIAL  SYSTEM  209 

tion  with  those  who  offer  patent  devices  for  making 
new  worlds  out  of  old.  Soviets  and  national  guilds, 
the  reform  of  the  tariff  and  the  resuscitation  of  the 
manor  may  or  may  not  have  their  uses — that  is  a  mat- 
ter for  enquiry — but  they  are  not,  and  cannot  be, 
panaceas.  Society  is  too  complex  to  be  put  right  by 
any  formula. 

The  only  way  of  salvation  is  to  reform  the  thought 
that  gives  birth  to  the  institutions,  to  forsake  the 
unreal  for  the  real,  the  formula  for  the  reality.  To 
change  the  visible  order  is  merely  to  regild  or  dye  red 
the  surface,  but  change  the  spirit  and  all  the  rest 
follows. 

The  first  step,  if  we  would  regain  that  innocence  of 
vision  which  is  the  prelude  to  all  effective  reform,  is 
to  make  the  great  renunciation  of  our  formulas  and 
catchwords  and  try  to  see  things  not  as  our  theories 
would  have  them,  but  as  they  might  appear  to  a  visitor 
from  some  other  world  to  whom  everything  was  a 
source  of  wondering  interest  and  nothing  a  matter  of 
course. 

We  can  imagine  the  curious  rubbish  heap  of  dis- 
carded formulas  to  which  we  should  contribute  our 
own.  There,  prominently,  would  lie  the  slave  state 
and  the  capitalist  system  along  v*^ith  the  red  peril  and 
the  national  honour,  a  plant  so  deeply  rooted  in  dis- 
honour that  it  would  have  taken  some  pulling  up. 
Thereon  would  have  fallen,  with  a  thud  of  extreme 
dulness,  the  white  man's  burden,  and  all  around 
would  He  decaying  flowers  of  prestige. 

Militarism  and  pacificism  would  repose  side  by  side. 


210  FACING  REALITY 

along  with  a  multitude  of  other  isms,  imperialism, 
syndicalism,  communism,  conservatism,  liberalism, 
feminism,  and  in  huge  and  inchoate  prominence  so- 
cialism, all  rotting  together  along  with  "fat**  and 
labour.  Partition  would  certainly  lie  there  along 
with  natural  frontiers,  not  far  from  the  skeletons  of 
divine  right  and  legitimacy. 

There,  too,  would  be  the  offensive  remains  of  Anti- 
Semitism,  and  there,  most  certainly  of  all,  obscurant- 
ism. And  then,  having  each  of  us  made  his  private 
contribution  to  the  general  litter,  and  assisted  in  shoot- 
ing the  whole  collection  to  the  devil,  we  might  get  on 
with  the  business  of  putting  the  world  to  rights. 

Some  things,  obvious  enough  before  but  for  that 
very  reason  little  regarded,  would  now  stand  forth  in 
startling  simplicity.  Mankind  would  appear  for  the 
first  time  not  as  a  competition  of  principalities  and 
powers,  of  classes  and  interests,  but  as  the  most  daring 
of  all  adventures,  the  forlorn  hope  of  life  engaged  in 
wresting  from  the  universe  its  kindly  fruits,  so  that  in 
due  time  we  may  enjoy  them. 

It  would  be  seen  how  that  which  binds  us  together 
is  of  infinitely  more  importance  than  that  which  sepa- 
rates us.  War  between  class  and  class  and  nation 
and  nation  would  appear  as  insane  and  wicked  as  a 
mutiny  on  board  a  sailing  ship  rounding  Cape  Horn 
in  a  gale. 

It  is  only  in  appearance  that  nature  is  passive.  She 
is,  in  fact,  the  keenest  of  opponents,  who  never  fails 
to  take  advantage  of  a  mistake,  or  of  any  slackening 
of  energy  on  the  part  of  her  assailant,  man.    Life  has 


REALITY  AND  SOCIAL  SYSTEM  211 

no  choice  between  victory  and  annihilation.  Civilisa- 
tion has  rendered  this  more  the  case  than  ever  before, 
and  we  are  less  like  an  army  defending  its  own  terri- 
tory than  one  which  has  penetrated  deep  into  the  heart 
of  a  hostile  country,  and  has  no  retreat  if  once  de- 
feated. 

Man's  very  efforts  after  improving  his  condition 
have  rendered  him  capable  of  dispensing  with  his  own 
improvements.  He  has  so  lavishly  populated  the 
world  that  only  by  all  the  resources  of  scientific  pro- 
duction and  distribution  can  he  keep  himself  alive 
for  a  week  together.    If  these  should  break  down? 

Russia  affords  sufficient  warning  of  what  even  a 
partial  breakdown  entails,  and  Russia  is  less  depen- 
dent on  civilisation  than  a  country  like  England, 
where  most  of  the  people  live  in  towns  and  look  for 
their  daily  bread  to  lands  thousands  of  miles  away, 
of  whose  names  they  may  not  even  have  heard. 

Civilisation  is  not  a  thing  that  will  run  itself.  Hour 
by  hour  men  and  women  are  working  themselves,  by 
the  million,  out  of  all  that  makes  life  worth  living,  in 
order  that  life  may  go  on. 

Immense  stores  of  energy,  accumulated  eeons  ago, 
are  being  unlocked  moment  by  moment  for  our  bene- 
fit. But  this  energy  is  a  strictly  limited  fund,  the 
coalfields  are  in  measurable  distance  of  being  ex- 
hausted, the  world's  oil  is  hardly  good  for  our  own 
lifetimes,  and  unless  our  brains  are  capable  of  dis- 
covering some  fresh  source  of  energy,  mankind  is 
rushing  to  a  catastrophe  similar  to  that  which  over- 
takes a  man  when  the  company,  from  which  his  in- 


212  FACING  REALITY 

come  is  derived,  ceases  to  pay  dividends.  And  this 
is  on  the  assumption  that  we  can  find  some  means  of 
hanging  together  and  not  turning  the  resources  of 
civiKsation  against  each  other  and  civihsation  itself. 

The  first  thing  of  all  needful  is  to  acquire  this 
vision  of  mankind  as  a  forlorn  hope  against  nature, 
an  adventure  in  an  uncharted  country,  as  something 
that  demands  a  spirit  of  comradeship  and  co-opera- 
tion if  it  is  to  have  any  chance  of  succeeding.  Any- 
thing that  tends  to  foster  strife  or  hatred  ought  to  be 
scouted  as  treason  or,  at  best,  as  dangerous  lunacy. 

The  spirit  that  delights  in  finding  enemies  and 
then  in  depicting  them  as  more  odious  than  they  are 
ought  to  be  known  for  the  devilish  thing  it  is.  All 
that  type  of  caricature  in  which  the  ingenuity  of  the 
artist  is  employed  in  depicting  an  opponent  as  con- 
temptible and  disgusting,  all  evil  nicknames  like 
"fat,"  "wastrel,"  "murder-gang,"  "paid  agitator," 
"Hun,"  ought  to  be  regarded  as  blows,  not  at  an 
enemy,  but  at  mankind  and  the  light. 

The  spirit  of  artificial  competition  that  regards 
eveiy  game  as  a  fight  and  all  life  as  a  game  ought  to 
be  kept  within  limits.  If  there  is  to  be  emulation  of 
class  or  party,  let  it  be  in  service  and  understanding, 
in  love  that  thinketh  no  evil  and  to  which  my  neigh- 
bour is  as  myself. 

Then,  having  shed  our  formulas  and  harmonised 
our  minds  to  an  attitude  of  peace  and  goodwill,  let 
us  take  stock  of  the  civilisation  of  which  we  have 
bhndly  possessed  ourselves.     We  shall  then  be  in  a 


REALITY  AND  SOCIAL  SYSTEM  213 

better  position  to  realise  what  a  pitiful  waste  and 
even  destruction  we  have  made  of  our  resources. 

Instead  of  having  enough  to  go  round,  and  leave 
something  over  for  the  realisation  of  a  beautiful  and 
noble  life,  we  are  in  more  imminent  danger  of  reeling 
back  into  the  beast  than  before  we  succeeded  in  multi- 
plying our  resources  beyond  the  dreams  of  our  fore- 
fathers. We  have  gone  far  enough  in  muddle  and 
perversity  to  realise,  by  the  bitter  fruits  of  it,  that 
the  path  we  have  chosen  hitherto  is  definitely  wrong, 
and  that  we  have  barely  time  to  find  and  take  the 
right  one. 

The  first  thing  to  do  is  to  translate  our  newly-ac- 
quired goodwill  into  practical  terms.  Our  powers 
have  been  cancelled  or  dissipated  by  being  turned 
against  each  other,  instead  of  to  the  common  purpose 
of  making  the  world  better.  It  is  time  for  us  to  get 
together  and  consider  the  matter  from  the  standpoint 
of  life  against  the  universe,  and  not  merely  from  that 
of  life  against  life.  It  ought  to  be  an  axiom  that  men 
can  never  have  too  much  power  or  knowledge  pro- 
vided that  they  use  them  rightly. 

In  what  way,  then,  can  we  bend  our  energies  so  as 
to  make  the  adventure  of  life  a  success?  What  does 
mankind  want — ^how  much  bread,  how  many  cakes 
and  bottles  of  ale,  what  art  and  literature?  And  how 
are  its  united  powers  to  be  directed  and  disposed  so 
as  to  attain  these  desirable  results? 

One  question  that  will  be  faced  and  answered  with 
a  frankness  inconceivable  now  is  that  which  concerns 
the  dirty  work  of  mankind.    Who  is  to  do  that  which 


214  FACING  REALITY 

is  performed  in  India  by  the  sweeper  caste?  Who 
is  to  go  down  into  the  black  bowels  of  the  earth  to 
hew  out  the  coal  ?  Who  is  to  perform  the  mechanical 
and  unintelligent,  but  necessary  tasks  that  keep 
civilisation  alive  ?  And  above  all,  what  type  of  mind 
must  such  a  man  have?  If  you  have  trained  him  to 
enjoy  the  delicacies  and  refinements  of  life,  you  may 
be  rendering  the  task  of  poking  about  sewers  an  acute 
torture. 

This  is  one  of  the  dilemmas  that  ij  commonly  evaded 
by  those  who  label  themselves  democrats.  But  as 
things  stand  at  present,  there  seems  little  choice  be- 
tween levelling  down  all  to  a  common  unrefinement, 
which  appears  to  be  the  way  of  the  Bolshevists,  or 
of  boldly,  if  reluctantly,  violating  the  principle  of 
equahty  and  admitting,  in  ever  so  modified  a  form, 
the  distinction  between  the  sweeper  and  the  Brahman. 

However  we  think  to  solve  this  problem,  it  is  one 
to  be  faced  not  in  a  passion,  but  with  a  seriousness 
proportionate  to  its  difficulty.  It  will  not  be  disposed 
of  by  passionately  declaiming  that  it  does  not  exist. 

And  this  brings  us  to  another  aspect  of  our  civilisa- 
tion that  is  too  much  disregarded.  Human  welfare 
not  only  depends  upon  what  we  get  and  distribute, 
but  also  on  how  we  get  it.  He  who  toils  pleasantly 
for  a  httle  may  be  better  off  than  he  who  wastes  his 
life  to  provide  himself  with  abundance  of  living.  One 
of  the  most  disastrous  of  our  anarchic  fallacies  is  that 
while  the  results  of  work  are  regarded,  the  work  itself 
is  treated  as  if  it  were  a  matter  of  indifference. 

What  is  known  as  scientific  business  management 


REALITY  AND  SOCIAL  SYSTEM  215 

is  often  no  better  than  scientific  boredom  and  debase- 
ment of  mind.  That  every  task  should  be  standard- 
ised and  every  man  so  disposed  of  as  to  do  the  same 
thing  again  and  again  with  the  rapidity  of  a  machine 
is  enough  to  make  the  modern  mechanic  cast  back 
eyes  of  envy  on  the  flint-worker  of  the  stone  age. 
And  yet  what  is  to  be  done,  if  the  competition  of 
other  firms  and  other  nations  imposes  an  iron  law  of 
maximum  production  by  any  means? 

The  question  propounded  by  Samuel  Butler  has 
yet  to  be  answered — are  mankind  to  be  the  masters 
or  the  slaves  of  their  machines  ?  As  long  as  the  men 
are  incapable  of  uniting,  the  machines  will  control  the 
situation.  Left  to  themselves  or  to  competition,  they 
will  impose  conditions  that  will  liken  men  as  far  as 
possible  to  themselves,  except  for  the  machine's 
blessed  privilege  of  neither  knowing  nor  feeling.  Con- 
trolled wisely,  they  will  take  off  man's  hands  just 
that  work  of  unintelligence  and  drudgery  whose  neces- 
sity is  among  the  greatest  obstacles  to  his  develop- 
ment. 

In  the  ideal  state  of  society  the  machines  will  have 
taken  over  the  functions  which  the  Greeks  frankly 
assigned  to  the  slaves,  and  which  we,  with  less  clear- 
ness of  vision,  have  relegated  to  men  with  the  legal 
status  of  free  men  and  the  social  status  of  slaves. 

But  here  we  encounter  another  difficulty.  The  na- 
tion is  too  small  a  unit  over  which  to  make  such  a 
reform  effective.  The  whole  of  mankind  must  fall 
into  line,  or  the  thing  cannot  be  done.  So  long  as 
one  nation  is  out  to  undersell  another,  so  long  are 


216  FACING  REALITY 

both  of  them  driven  to  sacrifice  everything  to  the 
necessity  of  producing  cheap  goods  quickly,  so  long 
will  the  workman  be  treated  to  the  reproaches  of  the 
equally  overworked  newspaper  man,  concerning  the 
additional  number  of  hours  the  German  can  work  on 
an  inferior  diet,  or  the  greater  hustling  powers  of  the 
Yankee. 

Bill  Nye  may  not  have  been  an  estimable  character, 
and  yet  when  he  said  that  we  are  ruined  by  Chinese 
cheap  labour  he  was  not  altogether  wrong.  It  is  a 
bedrock  principle  of  constructive  economics  that  men 
are  brothers,  and  it  is  dangerous  to  make  a  brother's 
cheap  living  a  stepping  stone  to  cheap  goods,  even 
when  that  brother  happens  to  be  a  defeated  enemy. 

There  is  another  contributing  factor  to  social  wel- 
fare that  must  not  be  forgotten.  There  is  a  duty  of 
enjoyment  as  well  as  of  work.  Cheap  standardised 
goods  are  only  produced  because  men  are  either  not 
intelligent  enough  or  well  enough  off  to  demand  any- 
thing else. 

The  pride  that  makes  a  virtue  of  throwing  back 
the  gifts  of  God  into  His  face  is  not  only  mistaken, 
but  a  deadly  sin.  He  who  denies  himself  the  joy  of 
having  beautiful  things  is  denying  some  craftsman 
the  joy  of  making  them.  For  there  is  a  brotherhood 
in  joy  as  well  as  in  sorrow,  and  to  deny  it  to  oneself  is 
to  deny  it  to  one's  neighbour. 

Indeed,  in  a  perfect  state  of  things,  the  vicious 
distinction  between  work  and  enjoyment  would  vanish 
away.  Creative  genius  is  the  highest  of  human 
faculties,  and  its  perpetual  exercise  the  highest  goal 


REALITY  AND  SOCIAL  SYSTEM  217 

of  human  endeavour.  Were  all  men  artists,  not  only 
would  work  be  a  perpetual  delight,  but  the  mere  re- 
ception of  it  would  involve  the  joy  of  creating  it  anew. 

We  have  made  no  attempt  to  formulate  a  pro- 
gramme for  the  social  reformer,  or  to  give  more  than 
the  barest  hint  of  the  difficulties  and  dangers  that 
beset  him.  This  is  an  age  that  cries  out  for  a  formula 
as  an  earlier  generation  for  a  sign.  But  before  any 
sort  of  programme  can  avail  there  must  come  a  change 
of  spirit.  Amid  all  the  babel  of  conflicting  policies 
and  dogmas,  the  still,  small  voice  of  the  truth  is  put 
to  silence.  But  he  who  loves  the  truth  and  cleaves 
to  her  will  surely  find  the  way. 

If  once  men  were  enabled  to  turn  and  see  them- 
selves as  they  really  are,  comrades  and  fellow  soldiers 
in  a  struggle  to  which  the  greatest  wars  of  history 
are  but  the  bickerings  of  children,  if  they  could  realise 
how  fatally  they  are  even  now  wasting  their  oppor- 
tunity, and  how  near  their  criminal  blindness  has 
brought  them  to  the  brink  of  ruin,  they  would  turn 
with  such  earnestness  and  unanimity  to  the  task  of 
their  own  salvation  that  the  details  would  soon  become 
clear.  It  is,  in  the  deepest  sense  of  the  word, 
rehgion  for  the  lack  of  which  we  go  blind. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE   GOSPEL    OF   REALITY 

THE  task  of  putting  our  civilisation  to  rights  thus 
resolves  itself  into  one,  primarily,  of  religion. 
As  Hfe  is  a  perpetual  struggle  of  the  creature  to  adapt 
itself  to  reality,  so  is  religion  man's  attempt  to  adapt 
himself  to  the  ultimate  and  most  comprehensive  reality 
he  is  capable  of  conceiving. 

The  most  primitive  of  savages,  when  he  tries  to 
propitiate  his  totem,  is  making  some  attempt  to  get 
into  touch  with  a  power  that  he  feels  vaguely  to  lie 
behind  the  things  he  sees.  Some  attempt  there  must 
be,  however  crude,  to  make  the  necessary  reply  of  life 
to  reality.  The  human  mind  can  never  be  satisfied 
with  an  attitude  of  passive  helplessness,  the  savage 
cannot  admit  his  ignorance  of  what  causes  the  rain 
or  guides  the  year  through  its  changes. 

Like  his  ancestor  the  worm  and  his  cousin  the  plant 
man's  nature  is  to  reply  to  any  clear  challenge  from 
the  outside  world,  and  anj!-  reply  is  better  than  none. 
Hence,  as  his  circle  of  interests  widens,  he  makes  the 
strangest  attempts  to  adapt  himself  to  the  new  con- 
ditions, his  witch  doctors  make  the  rain,  his  priests 
sacrifice  victims  to  bring  back  the  sun,  his  maidens 
leap  in  the  magic  circle  crying  "Flax  grow!  Flax 
grow!" 

218 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  REALITY         219 

Primitive  man,  by  insisting  upon  having  a  reply  of 
some  kind  to  reality,  was  putting  himself  in  an  un- 
fortunate dilemma.  He  was  forced  to  assume  a 
knowledge  about  what  he  knew  and  could  know  noth- 
ing to  afford  any  reasonable  basis  for  action.  He 
could  know  nothing  of  the  condensation  of  vapour  or 
the  working  of  gravitation,  he  could  not  get  it  out  of 
his  head  that  the  forces  of  nature  were  persons,  and 
therefore,  in  default  of  understanding  the  world 
around  him,  he  had,  for  practical  purposes,  to  create 
a  dream  world  of  his  own,  fashioned  like  all  dreams 
in  the  image  of  his  desires  and  fears.  He  then  pro- 
ceeded to  act  as  if  this  world  were  real. 

The  girl  who  jumps  to  make  the  flax  grow  would 
probably  be  either  hurt  or  angry  if  you  explained  to 
her  that  all  the  jumping  in  the  world  never  made  the 
least  acceleration  in  the  growth  of  any  plant.  The 
girl  wants  it  to  grow,  she  cannot  bear  to  think  that 
so  important  a  matter  is  absolutely  beyond  her 
control. 

In  the  same  way  a  soldier,  just  about  to  go  over 
the  top,  vows  that  if  he  comes  through  he  will  cease 
the  use  of  a  certain  sacred  word  as  an  expletive.  He 
cannot  bear  the  thought  of  the  German  machine  gun 
traversing  impartially  for  the  just  and  the  unjust, 
somebody  there  must  be  whom  he  can  bribe  to  deflect 
the  course  of  the  only  bullet  that  matters  by  at  least 
so  much  as  to  make  the  difference  between  a  kill  and 
a  "blighty"  one. 

A  gi-eat  part  of  religion,  or  man's  attempt  to  adapt 
himself  to  the  ultimate  reality,  has  therefore  consisted 


220  FACING  REALITY 

in  nothing  more  than  a  faculty  of  dreaming  awake. 
And  as  civilisation  has  advanced,  so  have  the  ad- 
herents of  this  kind  of  religion  fought  a  desperate  but 
losing  battle  for  their  diminishing  empire  of  dreams 
and  nightmares.  First  one  province  and  then  an- 
other has  been  torn  from  them,  and  only  curious  sur- 
vivals remain  to  show  how  vast  a  claim  was  that  of 
sheer  make-believe  to  dominate  the  universe. 

The  Anglican  rubric  contains  a  couple  of  prayers 
for  working  the  weather  which  take  us  back  to  the 
very  atmosphere  of  the  witch  doctor  and  his  rain- 
making.  Not  so  long  ago,  reverend  gentlemen  were 
lashing  themselves  into  transports  of  fury  because  a 
biologist  had  dared  to  make  discoveries  at  variance 
with  the  Chaldean  fairy-tale  about  the  world  having 
been  made  in  a  week.  So  had  the  inquisitors  made 
an  example  of  Galileo  for  blasphemously  allowing  the 
earth  to  take  its  impious  course  round  the  sun. 

Now  the  only  province  over  which  the  Empire  of 
dreams  disputes  with  science  on  anything  like  equal 
terms  is  that  which  concerns  the  survival  or  annihila- 
tion of  man  after  death,  a  matter  in  which  the  passions 
are  more  deeply  engaged  than  any  other,  and  in  which 
the  facts  of  the  case  are  most  disputed  and  uncertain. 

If  this  were  the  whole  of  religion,  there  would  be 
no  choice  for  the  uncompromising  seeker  after  the 
truth  but  to  scout  it  altogether  as  an  obsolete  mode 
of  thought.  If  it  be  true,  as  we  have  endeavoured  to 
shew,  that  the  whole  of  our  present  troubles  are  due 
to  our  habit  of  substituting  our  own  dreams  and  sym- 
bols for  reality,  then  religion,  as  the  worst  and  most 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  REALITY         221 

impenitent  offender  in  this  respect,  would  be  singled 
out  for  the  most  uncompromising  attack.  "Ecrcisez 
Vinfamer  would  become  the  cry  of  every  one  who  pre- 
ferred light  to  darkness.  "If  this  is  religion,"  we 
might  justly  say,  "then  religion  must  go." 

And  indeed,  in  so  far  as  religion  partakes  of  this 
nature,  it  is  obvious  that  no  man  can  cleave  to  it  and 
to  realitj'  at  the  same  time.  The  situation  of  mankind 
is  too  critical  for  us  to  rest  content  with  anything  short 
of  the  truth.  To  accept  a  version  of  the  facts  because 
it  comforts  us,  or  because,  in  the  words  of  a  revivalist 
hymn,  "it  was  good  for  our  fathers  and  it's  good 
enough  for  me,"  or,  as  is  perhaps  the  most  frequent 
cause  of  all,  from  sheer  laziness  and  indifference,  is  a 
line  of  conduct  more  fit  for  an  ostrich  than  a  man. 

In  whatever  high-sounding  and  mystical  terms  we 
may  state  the  case,  there  can  be  no  real  doubt  in  the 
mind  of  any  serious  man  that  the  clock  of  knowledge 
cannot  be  put  back,  and  that  where  the  priest  sets  his 
authority  against  the  gradually  accumulating  knowl- 
edge of  the  scientist,  the  priest  has  got  sooner  or  later 
to  give  up  obstructing  the  thoroughfare. 

It  is  time,  in  the  highest  interests  of  civilisation  and 
religion  itself  to  speak  out  boldly  on  this  subject,  and 
break  any  conspiracy  of  silence  there  may  be  to  retain 
as  many  of  the  old  fallacies  as  possible  by  a  skilful 
juggling  with  words,  or  by  ignoring  the  issues  at  stake. 
The  assumption  on  which  too  many  of  us  proceed  is 
that  we  must  at  any  cost  retain  the  old  dogmas  and 
beliefs,  even  if  we  have  to  doctor  their  meaning  to 
an  indefinite  extent. 


222  FACING  REALITY 

God  must  be  retained,  whatever  He  or  it  may 
signify,  because  it  would  be  too  horrible  to  admit  our- 
selves atheists.  Christianity  must  be  our  faith,  even 
if  Christ  be  proved  never  to  have  existed  at  all,  be- 
cause we  cannot  bear  the  thought  of  being  infidels. 
Our  beautiful  liturgy,  our  sacraments,  our  national 
church — these  we  must  retain  somehow.  Life  would 
be  unbearable  without  its  time-honoured  consolations. 
"Without  Thee  I  cannot  live,  without  Thee  I  dare 
not  die."  So  we  come  to  make  our  highest  aim  the 
retention  of  our  labels,  when  the  boxes  on  which  they 
are  pasted  have  been  long  since  emptied  of  their  con- 
tents. 

"Let  God  be  true  and  every  man  a  liar"  are  words 
only  too  expressive  of  our  methods  of  thought.  Even 
the  most  advanced  free-thinkers  have  usually  rounded 
off  their  systems  by  postulating  some  sort  of  God. 
Mr.  Wells,  who  would  drive  all  visible  kings  out  of 
the  universe,  has  taken  to  himself  an  invisible  king, 
though,  as  some  wag  once  suggested,  his  book  would 
have  been  better  rechristened,  "God  the  Invincible 
Wells."  Even  Swinburne,  having  driven  God  with 
curses  out  of  the  universe,  composed  one  of  the  most 
magnificent  of  all  hymns  to  the  goddess  he  set  up  in 
His  stead. 

And  yet  the  Almighty  Ruler  of  the  Universe  is 
demonstrably  the  last  of  a  long  series  of  dreams,  and 
we  can  now  trace  His  evolution  out  of  the  tribal  god, 
the  ancestral  ghost  and  the  totem.  He  is  the  final 
explanation  of  whatever  cannot  be  explained,  and  in 
Him,  as  Prince  Arjuna  in  the  Hindu  "Lord's  Song" 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  REALITY        223 

visioned  in  the  divine  charioteer,  are  contained  all  the 
Gods  and  principalities  and  powers  of  primitive  times 
and  men. 

It  is  obvious  that  to  prove  God's  existence  it  would 
be  necessary  first  to  assume  Him.  The  finite  mind 
could  have  no  criterion  by  which  to  judge  of  the  in- 
finite. To  say  that  the  universe  must  necessarily  be 
constituted  or  governed  on  any  lines  whatever  is  to 
assume  a  knowledge  of  its  workings  such  as  only  an 
infinite  being  could  possess.  And  to  fall  back  upon 
authority  is  only  to  shift  the  difficulty  one  stage  fur- 
ther back.  The  question  at  once  arises,  what  are  the 
authority's  credentials? 

If  the  Bible  tells  you  about  God  you  have  first  to 
get  God  to  guarantee  the  Bible.  Besides,  there  is 
a  diversity  of  authorities,  and  the  adherents  of  any 
one  of  them  seldom  recognise  the  genuineness  or  even 
the  harmlessness  of  the  others.  And  the  atheist  is 
hardly  to  be  refuted  when  he  argues  that  the  burden 
of  proof  rests  upon  those  who  want  to  introduce  God 
into  the  Universe. 

The  official  form  of  Christianity,  which  takes  its 
stand  upon  the  Gospels  as  historical  documents,  is 
ceasing  to  command  the  allegiance  of  educated  men. 
Now  that  the  full  light  of  criticism  has  been  turned 
upon  them  it  is  impossible  to  maintain  that  the  weight 
of  evidence  is  convincing  enough  to  leave  no  room  for 
reasonable  doubt,  even  on  such  a  fundamental  tenet 
as  the  resurrection. 

Nobody,  even  if  he  is  so  credulous  as  to  base  his 
hopes  of  immortality  on  one  feat  of  successful  magic. 


224  FACING  REALITY 

is  going  to  do  so  when  it  is  an  open  chance  that  no 
such  feat  was  ever  performed.  And  when  we  come 
to  examine  the  facts  closer,  we  find  it  highly  doubtful 
whether  Christ  made  such  claims  for  Himself  as  His 
worshippers  allege,  whether,  in  fact,  He  was  Him- 
self a  Christian. 

It  is  a  curious  instance  of  the  way  in  which  people 
ignore  any  fact  that  does  not  suit  their  convenience, 
that  the  text  *  is  tacitly  ignored  in  which  He  Himself 
claimed  to  be  God  only  in  the  sense  in  which  all  men 
to  whom  the  truth  comes  may,  by  the  same  mystical 
symbolism,  be  characterised  as  Gods.  Students  of 
comparative  religion  will  note,  with  interest,  the  way 
in  which  the  Buddha,  another  saviour  and  son  of  man, 
came  to  be  vested  with  a  posthumous  and  unauthorised 
deity. 

Recent  study  of  mental  processes  has  thrown  a 
penetrating  light  on  much  that  was  formerly  accepted 
without  question  as  pure  spiritual  emotion.  Among 
less  sophisticated  peoples  than  ourselves,  a  large  part 
of  religion  was  frankly  sexual,  and  it  may  be  ques- 
tioned whether  w^e  have  succeeded  in  eliminating  the 
Phallic  reality  merely  by  Bowdlerising  our  ritual. 
We  are  now  beginning  to  understand  something  of 
what  underlies  the  nauseating  Jesu  cult,  so  dear  to 
revivalists,  and  why  school  girls  of  fourteen  or  so,  and 
spinsters  in  the  thirties  are  apt  to  be  taken  with  such 
violent  access  of  devotion  to  good  works,  ceremonial, 
and  attractive  vicars. 

A  desire  for  an  invisible  in  default  of  a  visible  part- 

*Jolui  X.  34-36. 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  REALITY         225 

ner  is  no  doubt  human,  and,  in  its  way,  beautiful,  but 
it  is  not  what  has  hitherto  been  understood  by  Chris- 
tianity, nor  do  we  imagine  any  of  our  religious  digni- 
taries caring  frankly  to  proclaim  himself  as  a  leader 
and  abettor  of  a  cult  possessing  any  sort  of  spiritual 
kinship  to  those  of  Astarte  and  Krishna.  But  to  gloss 
over  our  real  motives  is  to  base  our  lives  upon  a  lie. 

The  question  must  be  faced,  calmly  and  without 
prejudice,  whether  the  bulk  of  what  passes  for  religion 
to-day  be  not  in  need  of  scrapping.  This  is  a  ques- 
tion with  which  we  cannot  afford  to  trifle  or  temporise. 
It  is  hopeless  to  think  of  putting  ourselves  right  with 
reality  if,  in  dealing  with  the  most  fundamental  reality 
of  all,  we  cling  to  formulas  long  since  obsolete,  and 
think  it  wicked  to  follow  the  truth  wherever  it  may 
lead. 

That  is  the  attitude  not  of  religion,  but  of  a  criminal 
and  frivolous  indifference  to  any  truth  whatever. 
It  is  the  attitude  of  the  man  who  thinks  that  by  mouth- 
ing "Lord,  Lord,"  he  shall  enter  into  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  It  is  the  attitude  of  the  respectable  folk 
who  poisoned  Socrates,  and  of  the  awful  High  Priest 
of  God  who  dispensed  with  further  witness,  having 
heard  such  blasphemy  as  could  only  be  expiated  on 
the  Cross. 

It  is  not  only  in  theory  but  in  practice  that  our 
modern  religion  conspicuously  fails.  So  manifestly 
is  it  out  of  touch  with  anything  real,  that  people  are 
ceasing  to  take  it  seriously.  Everywhere  the  cry  goes 
up  of  empty  churches,  and  those  who  form  the  bulk 
of  the  congregations  ai'e,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  not  the 


226  FACING  REALITY 

most  highly  intelligent  of  the  parishioners.  Even 
the  old  militant  doubt  is  becoming  tame  with  the  want 
of  anything  serious  to  attack.  The  Hyde  Park  orator 
who  foams  at  the  mouth  against  Moses  and  Elijah 
is  greeted  not  with  horror,  but  with  a  faint  smile  at 
taking  these  worthies  so  seriously. 

If  you  investigate  the  opinions  of  the  average  edu- 
cated young  man  of  the  university  class,  you  will  find, 
with  a  few  pious  exceptions,  that  he  is  either  bored 
with  the  whole  subject  of  religion,  or  else  that  he  is 
a  more  or  less  open  unbeliever.  And  the  failure  of 
the  various  churches,  during  the  late  war,  to  take  any 
decided  line  or  to  exercise  any  serious  influence  what- 
ever is  too  notorious  to  call  for  comment. 

The  current  and  official  religion  is  dying  before  our 
eyes  from  inanition,  and  it  does  not  look  as  if  the  most 
devout  efforts  to  galvanise  it  into  life  were  destined 
to  have  much  success. 

And  yet,  if  religion  is  the  supreme  effort  of  life  to 
adjust  itself  to  reality,  if  it  be  established  that  the  vital 
need  of  our  time  is  religious,  some  form  of  religion 
we  must  have  or  perish. 

To  abandon  ourselves  to  the  blind  and  godless  ma- 
terialism that  has  been  our  real  creed  for  the  past  two 
centuries  is  to  give  up  the  final  hope  of  saving  man- 
kind from  the  accomplishment  of  its  own  destruction. 
Again  we  are  presented  with  that  piteous  spectacle 
of  the  burdened  man  in  rags,  breaking  forth  into  his 
lamentable  cry  of  "What  shall  I  do?" 

Perhaps  it  would  be  best  after  all  if  he  were  to  turn 
his  gaze,  purged  of  the  mists  of  dogma  and  conven- 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  REALITY         227 

tion,  back  to  those  very  saviours  whose  teachings  are 
so  pitifully  travestied  to  bring  them  into  line  with  the 
world  they  would  have  reformed. 

He  would  find  a  striking  unanimity  in  their  gospels 
as  at  the  meeting,  on  the  summit,  of  many  paths  that 
have  wound  up  the  different  sides  of  a  mountain.  And 
he  will  see,  if  he  has  the  patience  to  ascend  by  any 
one  of  them,  suddenly  bursting  upon  him  like  some 
noble  landscape,  a  wholly  different  view  of  religion 
from  any  of  which  the  creeds  and  churches  have  given 
him  the  faintest  inkling. 

The  irrelevant  curiosity  that  wants  to  be  supplied 
with  a  peep  behind  the  scenes  of  the  cosmic  drama, 
the  cupidity  which  itches  for  a  short  cut  to  the  knowl- 
edge and  power  over  matter  which  it  is  man's  business 
to  acquire  for  himself,  the  vulgarity  that  seeks  after 
a  sign  and  the  weakness  that  pleads  for  selfish  con- 
solation, with  none  of  these  is  Christ  or  the  Buddha 
or  Lao  Tse  or  the  Krishna  of  the  Bhagavad  Gita  con- 
cerned. Their  news  is  of  the  attitude  that  a  man 
should  preserve  in  face  of  the  universe,  it  is  concerned 
with  that  Trinity  in  Unity,  the  way,  the  truth  and 
the  hfe. 

The  Kingdom  of  God,  that  is  the  gist  of  their  mes- 
sage, is  neither  in  the  heaven  above  nor  in  the  earth 
beneath,  but  within  every  man's  consciousness,  a  state 
of  the  soul.  "Thou  art  a  man,"  as  Blake  divined  with 
a  flash  of  superb  intuition,  "God  is  no  more!" 

Of  a  God  outside  ourselves  it  is  forever  impossible 
that  we  should  know,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  indiffer- 
ence whether  we  choose  to  discard  the  very  word,  with 


228  FACING  REALITY 

the  Buddha,  or,  with  Christ,  use  it  of  a  spirit  whose 
Kingdom  is  within  us,  and  of  which  it  can  be  said, 
by  every  true  man,  "I  and  my  Father  are  one." 

Whichever  form  of  expression  we  choose  to  adopt 
makes  little  enough  difference  to  the  way  of  life  with 
which  alone  religion  is  concerned.  It  is  no  business 
of  the  saviour  to  provide  an  up-to-date  version  of  Zeus 
and  Jehovah.  To  him  God  is  a  spirit,  the  spirit  in 
which  life  ought  to  be  lived. 

As  we  have  already  found,  this  spirit,  of  which 
every  gospel  is  the  good  tidings,  is  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  that  of  reality,  reality  which  is  petrified  and 
distorted  by  human  law  and  convention. 

A  divine  elasticity  of  soul  is  the  first  requisite  of 
salvation.  To  become  as  a  little  child  with  Christ,  to 
know  nothing  with  Socrates,  to  flee  from  illusion  with 
the  Buddha,  or,  with  Blake,  to  cast  off  our  filthy  gar- 
ments and  clothe  ourselves  with  imagination  consti- 
tutes a  duty  that  is  older  than  mankind. 

For  indeed  the  very  animals  have  stagnated  or 
perished  in  their  species  when  they  have  lost  their 
power  of  adapting  themselves  to  reality,  when  they 
have  let  some  successful  habit  of  past  ages  harden  into 
a  law  and  ceased  to  humble  themselves  to  conformity 
with  things  as  they  are. 

We  can  imagine  some  naturalist  adapting  the  fable 
of  the  publican  and  the  Pharisee  to  the  huge  bronto- 
saurus,  stiff  with  the  pride  of  being  lord  of  creation 
and  the  last  word  of  life,  and  the  humble  ancestor  of 
the  mammals,  conscious  only  of  his  own  imperfection 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  REALITY         229 

and  for  that  very  reason  better  fitted  to  hand  on 
the  torch  of  hfe  than  the  other. 

For  the  conviction  of  sin,  which  has  been  conven- 
tionahsed  into  a  formal  blackguarding  of  oneself  in 
set  terms  on  the  understanding  that  every  one  else 
is  an  equally  miserable  sinner  and  that  both  the  misery 
and  the  sin  are  to  be  taken  with  a  pinch  of  salt,  is 
rightly  nothing  but  the  recognition  that  to  be  satis- 
fied with  oneself  is  to  stagnate. 

What  we  are  to-day  is  no  guarantee  for  to-morrow, 
and  unless  we  can  contrive  to  be  born  again  from 
moment  to  moment,  or,  as  Paul  expressed  it,  to  die 
daily,  we  have  indeed  left  undone  the  things  that  we 
ought  to  have  done,  and  done  the  tilings  that  we  ought 
not  to  have  done,  and  there  is  no  health  in  us.  Our 
watch  on  reality  is  one  that  we  can  never  afford  to 
relax,  and  our  reply  must  be  not  by  formula,  but  by 
the  spirit. 

It  is  no  wonder,  considering  how  this  message  runs 
counter  to  all  the  indurated  selfishness  and  sloth  of 
mankind,  that  its  reception  should  have  been  every- 
where one  of  open  or  covert  hostility.  The  mere  vulgar 
reply  of  imprisonment  or  death  has  been  less  effec- 
tive than  the  expedient  of  turning  the  gospel  itself 
into  a  formula,  and  boldly  honouring  the  evangelist 
as  the  champion  of  the  very  things  he  devoted  his  life 
to  opposing. 

When  the  Brahman  conservatives  found  themselves 
too  weak  to  cope  with  the  Buddha  by  direct  opposi- 
tion, they  adopted  him  into  their  hierarchy  as  the 
eleventh  incarnation  of  Vishnu  with  an  even  better 


230  FACING  REALITY 

grace  than  the  Dukes  accepted  the  leadership  of  Mr. 
Lloyd  George. 

That  strangely  modern  Chinese  sage,  Lao  Tse,  who 
was  as  completely  free  from  dogmas  about  God  and 
gods  five-hundred  years  before  Christ  as  any  agnos- 
tic, and  who  preached  the  doctrine  of  union  with 
reality,  or  Tao,  in  its  most  direct  form,  was  posthu- 
mously made  the  figurehead  of  a  cult  notorious  for 
the  childishness  of  its  superstitious  practices. 

When  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  who,  under  one 
name  or  another,  form  a  pretty  constant  element  of 
most  nations,  found  that  they  could  not  kill  Christ 
by  crucifying  Him,  they  were  not  long  in  discovering 
how  from  a  dangerous  enemy  He  might  be  trans- 
formed into  a  valuable  asset  to  their  order,  simply  by 
dressing  up  His  image  in  the  robes  of  Caiaphas,  and 
using  His  name  as  a  sanction  for  the  very  formula 
and  convention  He  had  spent  Himself  in  opposing. 

Once  Caiaphanity  could  be  nicknamed  Christianity, 
the  whip  of  small  cords  was  robbed  of  its  sting  and  the 
mount  of  Calvary  of  its  victory.  That  nickname  has 
stuck  ever  since  its  adoption,  and  so  complete  is  the 
triumph  of  Caiaphas  that  any  fresh  attempt  to  chal- 
lenge his  law,  to  re-assert  the  message  of  his  martyred 
Adversary  and  call  upon  the  world  to  choose  between 
Christ  and  Christianity,  will  no  doubt  be  denounced 
as  un-Christian  blasphemy. 

We  make  no  attempt  to  set  up  Christ,  or  any  other 
saviour  as  a  fetish  of  infallibility.  To  postulate  this 
of  another  it  would  be  necessary  to  be  infallible  one- 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  REALITY         231 

self,  and  the  rebuke  is  decisive,  "Why  callest  thou 
me  good?    There  is  none  good  save  God  only." 

By  making  gods  of  our  teachers  we  fashion  them, 
like  all  gods,  in  our  own  image,  and  cease  to  see  or 
to  hear  them.  By  their  fruits  they  shall  be  known, 
and  we  are  to  judge  them  by  their  conformity  with  the 
truth,  and  not  the  truth  by  its  conformity  with  their 
life  or  teaching.  The  bedevilling  of  the  poor  pigs  and 
the  blasting  of  the  fig-tree,  if  they  ever  occurred,  are 
to  be  judged  exactly  as  we  should  judge  any  other 
acts  of  cruelty  or  petulance. 

In  the  recorded  teachings,  even  of  the  greatest  of 
the  world's  saviours,  it  is  easy  enough  to  find  evidence 
that  they  were  not  entirely  free  from  the  very  environ- 
ment they  sought  to  reform. 

There  is  much  that  we  have  learnt  of  which  they 
were  ignorant.  The  whole  nature  of  reality  neither 
they  nor  any  one  has  ever  comprehended.  But  that 
they  clave  fast  to  reality,  as  they  understood  it,  that 
they  treated  the  law  and  the  letter  of  their  day  as  we 
too  ought  to  treat  the  convention  and  dogma  of  ours, 
is  their  title  to  our  honour  and  gratitude,  and  our 
warrant  for  repeating,  "Go  thou  and  do  likewise!" 

The  knowledge  we  have  acquired  of  the  mind  and 
its  workings  has  enabled  us  to  see  the  way  of  the 
spirit  in  a  somewhat  clearer  perspective  than  was  pos- 
sible in  past  ages.  For  what  the  mystics  call  the  way 
of  perfection  is,  in  truth,  no  more  than  the  way  of 
mental  health.  To  increase  in  wisdom  and  in  good- 
ness ought  to  be  as  normal  as  it  is  to  increase  in 
stature. 


232  FACING  REALITY 

Every  life  is,  in  fact,  evolution  in  miniature.  Life 
in  particular,  like  life  in  general,  is  a  continuous 
adaptation  to  reality,  a  reality  which  is  perpetually 
enlarging  its  bounds  as  life  advances  to  meet  it.  The 
reality  of  the  infant  is  not  that  of  the  youth,  nor  the 
reality  of  the  youth  that  of  the  grey -beard. 

To  the  infant,  as  soon  as  it  has  become  conscious  of 
existing  at  all,  nothing  exists  but  itself.  It  is  a  per- 
fect httle  egotist.  Other  people  only  exist  for  it  and 
not  for  their  own  sakes  at  all.  It  is  little  conscious  of 
the  difference  between  things  as  they  are  and  things 
as  one  would  have  them. 

Those  of  us  who  can  remember  far  enough  back 
will  be  struck  by  the  vividness  and  reality  of  dreams, 
which  often  constitute  the  earliest  memories.  Its 
senses  tell  the  infant  of  its  private  wants,  and  it  is 
glad  or  sorry  according  as  these  are  satisfied.  Grad- 
ually, however,  the  world  of  other  lives  begins  to  dawn 
on  the  growing  child.  The  mere  clinging  to  the  par- 
ent for  food  or  protection  ripens  into  a  love  that  may 
persist,  often  mischievously,  throughout  life. 

Boy  or  girl  friendships,  as  intense  as  ephemeral, 
come  into  being.  And  on  these,  in  the  ripeness  of 
time,  supervenes  the  great  experience  of  love  between 
the  sexes,  in  which  two  become  one  flesh.  Conmiunal 
attachments  are  formed,  the  school  expands  into  the 
country  and  the  country,  if  the  development  is  com- 
plete, into  mankind. 

The  egotism  and  self-centredness  which  some  phi- 
losophers have  tried  to  depict  as  the  very  stuff  of 
which  himian  nature  is  made,  is  thus  seen  to  be  no 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  REALITY        233 

more  than  a  passing  phase  of  infantile  development. 
To  feel  for  oneself  alone  is  not  only  wicked,  it  is 
babyish.  It  is  as  normal  for  the  grown  man  or  woman 
to  feel  for  others  as  it  is  for  the  infant  to  feel  for 
himself. 

The  criminal  or  the  perfect  egotist  is  the  man  who 
has  contrived  to  grow  up  physically  and  yet  to  retain 
the  mind  of  an  infant.  The  reality  of  which  he  ought 
gradually  to  become  conscious,  and  to  which  he  should 
have  adapted  himself,  has  not  come  to  exist  for  him. 
He  is  more  to  be  pitied  as  a  sick  man  than  hated  as  a 
bad  one. 

The  golden  rule,  to  love  my  neighbour  as  myself, 
is  thus  no  more  than  a  first  principle  of  health.  But 
here  arises,  most  pertinently,  the  old  query — who  is 
my  neighbour?  What  warrant  have  I  for  assuming 
his  existence  at  all,  much  less  my  obligation  to  love 
him?  How  if  he  be  but  a  fiction  of  my  imagination, 
like  the  people  I  have  accepted,  without  question,  in 
dream. 

The  answer,  though  simple,  goes  to  the  very  root 
of  religion.  I  am  conscious  of  my  neighbour  in  ex- 
actly the  same  way  as  I  am  conscious  of  myself,  I 
have  come  to  reaHse  his  existence  as  I  first  came  to 
realise  my  own,  my  imagination  apprises  me  of  his 
joys  and  pains  as  my  senses  apprise  me  of  my  own, 
in  short  I  love  my  neighbour  because  I  am  my  neigh- 
bour. 

And  gradually,  as  I  advance  out  of  the  unreal  into 
the  real,  as  the  sun  of  knowledge  breaks  through  the 
mists  of  illusion  that  surround  me,  I  am  reborn  into 


234  FACING  REALITY 

an  existence  far  transcending  that  of  individual  me, 
my  consciousness  becomes  that  of  Hfe  itself,  my  days 
its  asons,  and  my  hope  in  the  coming  of  that  time  when 
life  shall  so  far  have  attained  the  mastery  that  the 
universe  has  become  as  plastic  as  a  day-dream  and 
death  is  swallowed  up  in  victory. 

For  this  reason  we  say  that  the  hope  of  saving  the 
world  lies  in  a  quickening  of  religion.  Mankind  is 
in  a  state  of  arrested  development.  Like  the  criminal 
and  egotist  we  have  grown  in  physical  power  without 
expanding  mentally,  and  so  succeeded  in  realising  the 
horror  of  a  criminal  and  egotist  civilisation. 

We  know  the  reality  of  our  own  appetites  and  in- 
terests, but  are  dead  to  the  greater  reality  of  life  and 
its  needs,  hfe  which  includes  not  only  our  own  race, 
but  everything  that  has  ever  stood  or  shall  stand  in  the 
great  comradeship  of  organised  response  to  force  and 
matter.  To  the  man  in  rags,  crying  "What  shall  I 
do?"  the  reply  is  now  clear: 

"Be  born  again  without  ceasing;  seek  and  cleave 
to  reahty ;  advance  in  the  spirit  of  life  from  strength 
to  strength  until  you  come  to  love  your  neighbour  as 
yourself,  and  life  more,  until  you  are  able  to  think  and 
act  for  the  whole  of  mankind,  and  thus  to  bear  your 
part  in  saving  the  adventure  of  hfe  from  ruin." 

It  is  so  simple.a  message  that  men  despise  it.  They 
want  their  prophets  to  enjoin  some  gi*eat  thing,  to 
provide  them  with  a  dogma  or  a  code  of  ethics  or  a 
Church  or  some  new  and  interesting  facts  about  God. 
They  cannot  believe  that  by  merely  turning  earnestly, 
with  all  their  mind  and  strength  and  soul  to  the  truth, 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  REALITY         235 

that  by  realising  how  hopeless  and  fatal  a  thing  it  is 
to  go  on  living  in  a  lie,  they  are  putting  themselves 
upon  a  path  that  will  open  before  them  as  they  ad- 
vance. 

First  attain  the  will  to  reality  and  you  will  no  longer 
be  tempted  to  gratify  egotism  or  to  lighten  the  work 
of  your  brain  by  throwing  reality  overboard.  Be 
born  again — the  new  life  may  be  hard  and  difficult, 
but  it  will  be  hfe  and  not  death. 


EPILOGUE 

WE  should  do  wrong  to  close  upon  a  note  of 
gloom.  Our  time  may  be  one  of  mortal  peril, 
but  it  is  none  the  less  tinged  with  the  promise  of  dawn. 
Signs  are  not  lacking  that  mankind  may  yet  be  capable 
of  thinking  and  acting  in  a  manner  worthy  its  head- 
ship of  life.  Even  as  we  write  comes  the  news  of  what 
maj^  prove  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  and  most  blessed 
events  in  human  history,  the  reconciliation  of  the  age- 
long feud  between  England  and  Ireland.  Far  away, 
beyond  the  ever-troubled  Atlantic,  statesmen  have 
been  making  genuine  and  at  least  partially  successful 
efforts  to  mitigate  the  insane  competition  in  the  means 
of  death  and  destruction,  and  thus  to  avert  the  final 
tragedy  of  another  war.  In  Europe  there  are  signs 
that  the  spirit  of  hate  and  international  anarchy  is  at 
last  giving  way  to  an  impulse  towards  getting  the 
nations  together  and  making  a  united  effort  to  realise 
the  possibilities  of  life,  not  at  each  others'  expense, 
but  in  a  spirit  of  co-operation  and  brotherhood. 

It  is  easy  for  cynicism  to  make  light  of  these  things, 
to  have  eyes  only  for  the  Gadarene  madness  of  Prus- 
sian principles  among  the  victors,  for  the  insufficiency 
of  the  Washington  palliatives,  for  the  multitudes  in 
England  and  Ireland  who  go  on  in  their  devil's  work 
of  peace-breaking  and  implacability,  and  seem  to  have 
borrowed  from  the  revolting  angels  their  motto  of 

236 


EPILOGUE  237 

"Oui'selves  alone."  But,  though  Europe  is  sick  al- 
most to  death,  with  her  rocking  exchanges  and  the 
kindly  mechanism  of  civilisation  out  of  gear,  there 
are  signs  of  that  awakening  to  the  truth  which  is  alone 
needful  to  her  recovery.  Right  and  wrong  were  never 
so  plainly  matched  against  each  other — on  the  one 
side  indurated  prejudice,  hatred,  gi'eed;  on  the  other 
truth,  generosity,  reason,  love.  But  to  make  the 
right  prevail  there  is  no  trust  in  any  God  or 
cosmic^  process,  failing  our  own  goodwill  to  create  our 
world  in  the  likeness  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  within 
us. 

And  this  gives  rise  to  a  reflection  similar  to  that  of 
Milton,  who  thought  that  if  God  were  purposing  some 
great  reformation.  He  would  first  of  all  reveal  it,  as 
His  manner  was,  to  His  Englishmen.  For,  with  all 
her  crimes  and  hypocrisy,  with  all  her  sluggishness 
of  imagination,  this  nation,  and  the  commonwealth  of 
nations  into  which  she  has  expanded,  has  at  least  stood, 
with  all  that  is  best  in  her,  for  a  more  generous  and 
enlightened  ideal  than  mankind  would  otherwise  have 
pursued.  It  is  something  to  have  conceived,  however 
imperfectly,  of  an  empire  so  godlike  that  its  service 
is  perfect  freedom,  to  have  begun  to  realise  how  much 
better  it  is  to  foster  individuality  than  to  destroy  it, 
to  confer  liberty  than  to  take  it  away.  Tyranny  in 
arms,  the  will  to  power  and  uniformity,  is  what  we 
fought  and  overcame  in  the  Great  War,  but  we  have 
to  advance  to  a  nobler  conquest,  the  overcoming  of 
these  things  not  in  their  Prussian  embodiment,  but 
among  ourselves  and  in  our  own  bosoms. 


238  FACING  REALITY 

What,  amid  all  the  vicissitudes  of  her  history,  has 
been  England's  saving  quality,  is  a  fitful  but  none  the 
less  persistent  adaptability  that  has  enabled  her  to 
discard  the  conventions  and  formulas  of  the  past,  and 
conform  to  the  living  reality  of  the  present.  When 
this  has  failed,  England  has  failed  too.  She  lost  her 
American  colonies  because  she  was  unable  to  con- 
ceive of  an  Empire  different  in  principle  from  those 
of  Rome  and  Spain,  she  has  drifted  to  the  gravest 
crisis  in  her  history  because  she  could  not  adapt  her- 
self to  the  changed  conditions  brought  about  by  her 
own  advance  in  mechanical  power.  But  time  and 
again  she  has  saved  herself  by  knowing  the  hour  of 
her  visitation,  by  her  capacity  for  seeing  things  as 
they  are,  and  doing  what  seemed  wild  and  impossible 
to  those  who  created  their  world  in  the  likeness  of 
their  prejudices. 

Thus  it  was  that  while  the  nations  of  the  Continent 
were  steeping  themselves  in  the  ideas  and  methods  of 
old  Rome,  England  was  evolving  a  law  and  a  system 
of  government  the  like  of  which  the  world  had  never 
yet  seen.  No  nation  but  England  would  have  thrown 
away,  with  so  superb  a  disregard  of  vulgar  calcula- 
tions, the  fruits  of  her  three  years'  war  in  South  Africa 
and  her  centuries  of  domination  over  Ireland,  no 
other  nation  would  have  rallied  her  Dominions  to  her 
side  by  cutting  them  free  from  all  obligations  but 
those  of  love  towards  the  Motherland.  And  if  any- 
where she  still  hesitates  to  do  the  bold  and  generous 
thing,  as  when  she  hardens  her  heart,  like  Pharaoh, 
against  Pharaoh's  own  people,  we,  who  love  her,  may 


EPILOGUE  239 

at  least  hope  in  confidence  that  she  will,  ere  long, 
cease  this  unnatural  revolt  against  her  own  nature 
and  spirit. 

And  is  it  too  much  to  hope  that  she  will  now  address 
herself  to  a  harder  task  and  a  more  splendid  victory 
than  any  in  the  past?  Mankind,  weary  and  distracted 
from  the  results  of  its  own  suicidal  madness,  is  calling 
for  leadership.  To  whom,  if  not  to  England,  should., 
it  be  given  to  break  from  the  fatal  obsessions  of  past 
years,  and  to  point  the  way  from  darkness  to  light? 
Has  she  not  given  birth  to  a  brotherhood  of  nations 
co-operating  with  each  other  in  love  and  liberty?  Is 
not  the  lesson  of  her  history,  rightly  understood, 
"Whatsoever  I  bound  I  lost,  but  whatsoever  I  loosed 
I  gained"?  She  has  applied  it,  as  is  her  way,  imper- 
fectly and  without  full  consciousness  of  its  meaning, 
but  is  there  any  reason  why  the  truth  that  has  been 
apprehended  in  part  should  not  now  be  known  even 
as  England  is  known  to  those  who  love  her  best,  or 
why  what  has  hitherto  held  good  for  one  group  of 
nations  should  not  be  extended  to  mankind  itself? 

For  it  is  no  formula  nor  system  that  England  has 
to  give,  but  the  freedom  of  mind  and  body  that  is  the 
indispensable  preliminary  of  any  attempt  to  see  and 
act  upon  the  truth.  It  is  her  power  of  adaptation  to 
new  and  unprecedented  situations  that  fits  her  to  give 
the  lead  in  the  supreme  attempt  of  life  to  face  and 
deal  with  a  wholly  diff'erent  order  of  reality  from  any 
of  past  experience.  From  whom,  if  not  from  her, 
shall  we  look  for  the  high  courage  that  flings  aside 
the  prudence  of  ages  and  the  chivalry  that  casts,  upon 


240  FACING  REALITY 

the  altar  of  an  ideal,  all  that  the  world  has  hitherto 
counted  for  advantage?  The  divine  madness  that 
loves  even  your  enemy  as  yourself,  that  triumphs  in 
giving  all  away  and  bewails  a  victory  with  tears  and 
lamentations,  the  spirit  which  the  world  has  alwaj'^s 
greeted  with  the  scorn  of  Pilate  and  the  hatred  of 
Caiaphas,  that,  and  nothing  else  is  needed  if  man- 
kind is  to  live  and  not  die.  And  if  it  should  be 
England's  fate  to  be  stripped  and  crucified  for  the 
world's  salvation,  what  more  splendid  destiny  could 
any  true  patriot  desire  for  her?  Assuredly  she  will 
rise  again  and  live  forever. 

Nor  is  it  only  to  England,  as  a  nation,  that  we 
would  appeal.  Surely,  surely,  there  must  be  men  and 
women  who  have  realised  how  vitally  the  very  exist- 
ence of  mankind  is  threatened  by  its  divorce  from 
reality.  And  upon  these  at  least,  however  few  and 
isolated  they  may  be,  it  is  incumbent  to  make  an  effort, 
the  utmost  that  lies  in  their  power,  to  cope  with  the 
peril.  If  only  two  or  three,  they  must  unite  as  friends 
and  comrades,  and  take  counsel  how  to  persuade,  to 
enHghten,  to  act.  If  they  must  be  accounted  mad 
that  the  world  may  become  sane,  if  they  must  needs 
sacrifice  themselves  to  the  faith  that  is  in  them,  that 
is  too  small  a  matter  to  be  weighed  in  the  balance. 
And  if  these  words  should  chance  to  inspire  one  heart 
to  translate  them  into  such  reahty,  they  will  not  have 
been  written  in  vain. 

THE  END 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  LOS  ANGELES 

THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


JUL  5     1949 


SEP  2 


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UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA  001  265  961  1 


CB 

425 

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